Business
South Africa officially enters recession─── MOEKETSI MOGOTSI 14:12 Tue, 06 Jun 2017
Bloemfontein - South Africa has officially entered a recession after recording two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
This comes after Statistician-General of South Africa, Pali Lehohla, released the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates for the first quarter of 2017.
The first quarter of the year contracted by 0.7% quarter-on-quarter after it had fallen by 0.3% during the last quarter of 2016.
Economist Lulu Krugel says South Africans should not go into panic mode just yet, even though it might have a negative impact on businesses as well as the general public.
“It’s obviously not good news but I do believe that things will start turning around eventually this year, although we will still see very low growth. We have also seen that the World Bank has revised South Africa’s growth output for the year downward from 1.1% to just over 0.5%,” she says.
Krugel says the political uncertainty in the country right now will raise the public’s concern. She says the drought that has just passed means that basic staple foods will be cheaper. Stats SA also reported that the agricultural sector recorded its first positive growth following eight consecutive quarterly contractions.
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