EDITORIAL: Growth — is this the turning point?
It turns out the recession was also milder than previously thought, which provides a springboard for the economy to exceed the consensus forecast of 0.8% real GDP growth for the whole year
It’s about time SA got some good news. This was delivered in spades this week, as the economy exited the recession with a resounding bang in the third quarter. The silver lining from this week’s announcement is that it turns out the recession was also milder than previously thought, which provides a springboard for the economy to exceed the consensus forecast of 0.8% real GDP growth for the whole year. It’s some reprieve after the gloom set in earlier this year, when it emerged that growth had contracted in the first and second quarters. It slashed confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ability to pilot the country’s economic revival. Since then, the virtuous cycle — where rising business and investor confidence was supposed to spark fixed investment and job creation — has failed to materialise. Instead, the nascent optimism has run aground on confidence-sapping issues like land expropriation and the fightback by the Zuma-aligned camp. Now it turns out this pessimism may have bee...
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