{"id":310036,"date":"2019-04-09T15:42:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T13:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=310036"},"modified":"2019-04-09T15:42:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T13:42:20","slug":"imf-cuts-south-african-growth-forecast-for-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/310036\/imf-cuts-south-african-growth-forecast-for-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF cuts South African growth forecast for 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The International Monetary Fund has <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/safrica-economy-imf\/imf-trims-south-africas-economic-growth-forecast-to-1-2-percent-idUSL8N21R3TV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lowered<\/a> <\/strong>its growth forecasts for South Africa from 1.5% to 1.3% for 2019.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Growth in South Africa is expected to marginally improve from 0.8% in 2018 to 1.2% in 2019 and 1.5% in 2020, a 0.2 percentage point downward revision for both years relative to the October projections,&#8221; the group said in its April <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/en\/Publications\/WEO\/Issues\/2019\/03\/28\/world-economic-outlook-april-2019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">report<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The projected recovery reflects modestly reduced but continued policy uncertainty in the South African economy after the May 2019 elections.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>South Africa\u2019s economy grew at o.8% in 2018 slightly beating estimates, according to Stats SA data <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/303364\/south-africas-gdp-growth-for-2018-crawls-to-0-8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">published<\/a> <\/strong>at the beginning of March.<\/p>\n<p>Economists and analysts expected the country\u2019s GDP figures to be around 0.6% and 0.7%.<\/p>\n<p>Following a technical recession in 2018, most forecasts were revised down from the 1.2%-1.5% range, as the economic realities set in despite upbeat talk around political change in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Third quarter data surprised on the upside, with the latest fourth quarter data showing the economy was bolstered by the communications and manufacturing industries.<\/p>\n<p>In the fourth quarter of 2018, GDP output was up 1.4% from the third quarter, and up 1.1% from the fourth quarter of 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at an <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/309928\/the-best-case-scenario-for-south-africas-elections-according-to-sp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">event<\/a> <\/strong>in Johannesburg on Tuesday (9 April),\u00a0 S&amp;P sovereign analyst Gardner Rusike said that investment remains South Africa\u2019s \u201cAchilles\u2019 heel\u201d and if that changes, the economy could expand more than 2% in coming years.<\/p>\n<p>S&amp;P rates South Africa\u2019s foreign-currency debt at BB, two levels below investment grade, and its rand-denominated obligations one step higher.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong> Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/309928\/the-best-case-scenario-for-south-africas-elections-according-to-sp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The best case scenario for South Africa\u2019s elections according to S&amp;P<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The International Monetary Fund has lowered its growth forecasts for South Africa from 1.5% to 1.3% for 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":143130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,2722],"class_list":["post-310036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-imf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310036","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=310036"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310044,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310036\/revisions\/310044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}