Loadshedding delays SA's economic growth by 2% - Kganyago

Kganyago was speaking at the Talk to the SARB forum in Soweto on Tuesday evening.

The forum provides an opportunity for Kganyago and his team to engage with the residents on monetary policy, discuss factors that have affected inflation and explain the rationale behind the bank’s monetary policy stance.

He told the residents of Soweto that the economy has returned to pre-Covid-19 levels, however; unemployment remains a challenging.

“The unemployment unfortunately is higher than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Kganyago acknowledged that there was a rise in inflation throughout the globe, but he added that South Africa has its own idiosyncrasies that affect the local economy.

“Amongst these factors was the impact of loadshedding which the reserve bank estimates that would have added about half-a-percent to the overall inflation during the course of this year.

“For many producers of food and some of the retailers, they had found that due to unavailability of reliable power, they ended up having to discard some of the products and with the discarding of those products, somebody had to pay for it and they ended up putting prices up to try and compensate for those losses, so this impact was beginning to come through,” said Kganyago.

He added that the South African economy is expected to grow by only 0,4% this year.

“ If it was not for loadshedding, this economy would’ve grown 2% faster…what is now driving investment is a response by South African businesses and households to bring alternative power."

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