Economy shrinks to pre-pandemic levels
South Africa’s economic woes show no signs of abating following the release of the latest GDP numbers by Stats SA.
Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke announced on Tuesday that South Africa's economy shrank 1.3 percent in the final three months of 2022 to return to below pre-pandemic levels.
Maluleke said all industries showed a slump in the fourth quarter amid record of levels of load shedding.
“In terms of our industries in primary, tertiary and of course secondary we can see that all of them from Q4 went on a slump.”
“As of the fourth quarter our economy contracted by 1.3% and year-on-year 0.9% and in the year 2022 it grew by 2%. There’s been a lot of speculation about how it would grow in the year 2022 and indeed speculations are always there. Real GDP we are saying that in Q4 we are sitting on 1.146 trillion, which his almost at the same level as that of 2020.”
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Finance and trade were the biggest drivers in the economic contraction, coming at -0.6% and -0.3% respectively.
The primary sector has also declined by 3.2% with agriculture demonstrating a decline in output for field crops and horticulture.
Mining also demonstrated decreased economic activities for diamonds, iron ore and PGMs, while manufacturing and electricity also showed a decline that equated to 0.9% and 1.9% respectively.
Economic growth is forecast to be as low as 0.3 percent in 2023 due to the electricity supply crisis, according to the Reserve Bank, down from 2.5 percent in 2022.
