{"id":178023,"date":"2017-06-07T10:25:56","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T08:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=178023"},"modified":"2017-06-07T10:25:56","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T08:25:56","slug":"finance-minister-to-meet-business-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/178023\/finance-minister-to-meet-business-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance minister to meet business leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel-pane pane-panels-mini pane-content-top\">\n<div class=\"panel-pane pane-page-title\">\n<p>Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is set to meet with business following news that South Africa\u2019s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2017 putting the country into recession.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"panel-pane pane-views-panes pane-news-story-specific-panel-pane-2\">\n<div class=\"view view-news-story-specific view-id-news_story_specific view-display-id-panel_pane_2 view-dom-id-1343b58056832a2b7db47b57c81dd055\">\n<div class=\"view-content\">\n<div class=\"views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last\">\n<div class=\"views-field views-field-body\">\n<div class=\"field-content\">\n<p>\u201cThe Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba will be seeking a meeting with business leaders soon to discuss ways of working together to achieve inclusive economic growth,\u201d said National Treasury.<\/p>\n<p>This, as Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released GDP figures on Tuesday. \u00a0The GDP rate was down from 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2016.<\/p>\n<p>At a media briefing Stats SA\u2019s Joe De Beer, the Deputy Director-General responsible for economic statistics, announced that the country is into the recession with a negative growth in the first quarter of last year and the first quarter of 2017.<\/p>\n<p>National Treasury said the worse than expected 0.7% contraction in the first quarter of 2017 introduces significant downward bias to the GDP growth estimates communicated in the 2017 Budget Review, which projected 2017 GDP growth at 1.3%.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the GDP contraction, there are green shoots that South Africa can leverage on to boost its own economic growth outlook, said Treasury.<\/p>\n<p>These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Improving global growth;<\/li>\n<li>Stabilising commodity prices;<\/li>\n<li>More favourable climate conditions;<\/li>\n<li>Reliable electricity supply; and<\/li>\n<li>Less volatile labour relations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThe current growth rate, if sustained, will lead to a further decline in GDP per capita and revenue, risking the sustainability of our fiscal framework and more importantly undermining the delivery of social services.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>National Treasury said the current state of the economy puts more pressure on government, business, labour and society.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe current state of the economy puts more pressure on us as government, business, labour and broader society to intensify our growth programme and improve confidence as a matter of urgency to arrest the decline and set the economy on a higher growth trajectory,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/167787\/new-finance-minister-malusi-gigabas-priorities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New finance minister Malusi Gigaba\u2019s priorities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is set to meet with business following news that South Africa\u2019s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2017 putting the country into recession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":52621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-178023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","category-government","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178023","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178025,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178023\/revisions\/178025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}