{"id":177885,"date":"2017-06-06T11:54:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T09:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=177885"},"modified":"2017-06-06T11:56:11","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T09:56:11","slug":"south-africas-economy-is-officially-in-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/177885\/south-africas-economy-is-officially-in-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s economy is officially in recession"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest gross domestic product (GDP) data released by Stats SA shows that the South African economy declined by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2017, putting the country into a technical recession.<\/p>\n

While the economy has slowed to a crawl over the past few years, the country has managed to escape the dreaded ‘official’ recession tag.<\/p>\n

In economic terms, a\u00a0technical recession is described as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. The last quarter of 2016 showed a 0.3% decline; with the latest decline of 0.7%, South Africa fits the bill.<\/p>\n

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

According to Stats SA the largest negative contributor to growth in GDP in the first quarter was the trade, catering and accommodation industry, which decreased by 5.9% and contributed -0.8 of a percentage point to GDP growth.<\/p>\n

The manufacturing industry contracted by 3.7% and contributed -0.5 of a percentage point to GDP growth.<\/p>\n

Seven out of ten divisions reported negative growth rates in the first quarter. The largest contributor to the decrease was the petroleum, chemical products, rubber and plastic products division.<\/p>\n

In contrast the mining and quarrying industry increased by 12.8%, and contributed 0.9 of a percentage point to GDP growth.<\/p>\n

Read: World Bank cuts SA economic growth projections<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The agriculture, forestry and fishing industry rebounded in the first quarter of 2017 on the back of eight consecutive quarters of contraction. The industry\u2019s increase of 22.2% in the first quarter of 2017 was mainly as a result of increases in the production of field crops and horticultural products.<\/p>\n

One of the key indicators of the declining economy is household spending, which showed a major decline in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Despite the quarterly decline, it is expected that GDP growth will rebound to 0.9% in the second quarter of the year, due to positive data released over the past few months.<\/p>\n

The last time South Africa\u00a0entered a recession was 2008-9, when it had three consecutive quarters of negative growth.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0The big problem with South Africa\u2019s \u2018debt forgiveness\u2019 plan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest GDP data released by Stats SA shows that the South African economy declined by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2017, putting the country into a technical recession.<\/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-177885","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\/177885","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=177885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177901,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177885\/revisions\/177901"}],"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=177885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}