Political situation might have ‘exaggerated’ decline in economy, Kganyago says
The response by the domestic economy to current world growth is "unusually weak", Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago said on Tuesday. Kganyago was speaking in a presentation to Parliament’s standing committee on finance on the role of the bank, the current economic situation and the bank’s forecasts for future growth. He said SA and Venezuela were the only sizeable economies currently in recession. The governor said the contraction in real GDP in the first quarter had been broad-based, with confidence weakening in quarter two "possibly exaggerated somewhat by the political environment". The bank has forecast growth of 0.5% for SA in 2017 and 1.2% in 2018. Business and consumer confidence had both fallen in the second quarter of 2017, with business confidence dipping in all five of the sectors surveyed by the Bureau for Economic Research. "Both the political climate and insufficient demand — constraints to business conditions in the manufacturing sector — increased notably in qua...
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