EDITORIAL: The mystery of SA's missed economic growth
Proposed new powers for the authorities in the Competition Amendment Bill are a perfect example of what makes business people groan
For the past decade, the government, Reserve Bank, IMF, World Bank and a host of local banks have started the year predicting a modest increase in growth compared with the previous year. Every single year, give or take one or two, they have all been forced to revise their growth targets downwards as the year’s data progressively comes rolling in. Why have they been so consistently wrong? What are they missing? Monday was the turn of the IMF, which slightly revised global growth downwards but took a huge hunk out of SA’s growth prospects, slashing growth by almost half. In October 2017, the IMF in its World Economic Outlook estimated that economic growth in SA would come in at 1.5% — hardly an impressive target. Instead, it’s now expected to come in at 0.8%. The consequence is that SA is now in its longest downward business cycle phase for over 73 years. The problem is not continental growth. In fact, 10 of the top 25 fastest-growing countries are African. The problem is not emerging...
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