{"id":126169,"date":"2016-06-08T11:45:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T09:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=126169"},"modified":"2016-06-08T11:54:41","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T09:54:41","slug":"massive-economic-decline-in-south-africa-puts-recession-back-on-the-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/126169\/massive-economic-decline-in-south-africa-puts-recession-back-on-the-map\/","title":{"rendered":"Massive economic decline in South Africa as recession looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite expectations from ratings firms to the contrary, South Africa is one step closer to a technical recession in 2016, after showing a massive decline in economic growth in the first quarter of the year.<\/p>\n

Stats SA has released its GDP data for the first quarter of 2016, showing that the country’s economy contracted by as much as 1.2%<\/strong>, down from marginal growth of 0.4% in Q4 2015.<\/p>\n

This contraction is significantly worse than expectations which pointed to a contraction of 0.1%.<\/p>\n

The largest negative contributor to growth in GDP in\u00a0the first quarter was mining and quarrying, which fell by\u00a018.1% and contributed -1.5 percentage points to GDP
\ngrowth, Stats SA said.<\/p>\n

Transport, storage and communication decreased by\u00a02.7%, which contributed -0.2 of a percentage point to\u00a0GDP growth.<\/p>\n

The two other industries that contracted in the first\u00a0quarter were agriculture, forestry and fishing; and\u00a0electricity, gas and water.<\/p>\n

Finance, real estate and business services increased\u00a0by 1.9%, which contributed 0.4 of a percentage point to\u00a0GDP growth.<\/p>\n

\"GDP<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"GDP<\/a><\/p>\n

Notably, this is not the biggest Q4 to Q1 drop South Africa has seen. GDP growth dropped from 4.9% to -1.6% between Q4 2013 and Q1 2014.<\/p>\n

However, South Africa had a weak fourth quarter in 2015 – which is historically seen as the strongest quarter due to holiday spending – growing at only 0.4%.<\/p>\n

The -1.2% growth rate in Q1 2016 puts South Africa on the edge of recession, if Q2 data shows the same negative growth it did in Q2 2015.<\/p>\n

Late May, Stats SA revised GDP data for 2015,\u00a0showing\u00a0that the country\u00a0narrowly missed a technical\u00a0recession by a mere 0.3 percentage points.<\/p>\n

A technical recession\u00a0is described as two successive quarters of economic decline.<\/p>\n

More on recession<\/h3>\n

Rand back below R15 vs the dollar as ratings agency says no recession for SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is how close South Africa came to a recession in 2015<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Recession fears for South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why South Africa will enter recession this year<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite expectations from ratings firms to the contrary, South Africa is one step closer to a technical recession in 2016, showing a massive decline in economic growth in the first quarter of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":95131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-126169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126169"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126189,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126169\/revisions\/126189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}