RECESSION
HILARY JOFFE: Cinderellas shine but stalwarts turn ugly
The question now is whether the 1% growth rate that the Reserve Bank, ratings agencies Fitch and S&P Global Ratings and the IMF are projecting for this year is attainable
There’s nothing technical about a recession, says Statistics SA’s head of economic statistics, Joe de Beer: "You’re either in it or you’re not." SA, clearly, is now in it. And while the convention among economists is to define a recession as two consecutive negative quarters — a criterion SA has now, sadly, met — on some definitions we’ve been in recession for a while. The 0.3% rate in 2016 hardly constituted growth. And on a per capita basis the economic growth rate has been negative since 2015, with growth lagging population growth.SA has been going backwards in real terms, with frightening consequences in terms of unemployment and shrinking incomes. Now, however, it’s in recession on any definition, to the consternation of economists, most of whom had expected that the economy would turn around from the negative 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2016 to show a positive 0.8% to 1% or so in the first quarter of this year – not a negative 0.7%. So how and why did so many economists get ...
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