{"id":365140,"date":"2020-01-09T10:02:38","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T08:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=365140"},"modified":"2020-01-09T10:02:38","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T08:02:38","slug":"world-bank-cuts-south-africas-growth-forecast-to-below-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/365140\/world-bank-cuts-south-africas-growth-forecast-to-below-1\/","title":{"rendered":"World Bank cuts South Africa’s growth forecast to below 1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Bank is the first key institution to cut its economic growth forecast for South Africa to below 1% for 2020 due to electricity supply concerns.<\/p>\n

It now expects the economy to expand by 0.9% this year, the Washington-based lender said Wednesday in its Global Economic Prospects report.<\/p>\n

That compares with an estimate of 1% in its Africa Pulse report released in October and is well below government forecasts.<\/p>\n

Its outlook for Africa\u2019s most-industrialized economy is \u201cmarkedly weaker\u201d because it sees electricity supply and infrastructure constraints inhibiting domestic growth with weaker global economic conditions weighing on export demand.<\/p>\n

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

The bank\u2019s revision comes as Eskom, which generates about 95% of the country\u2019s electricity, resumes rolling blackouts earlier than expected.<\/p>\n

The power cuts threaten to drag on an economy stuck in the longest downward cycle since 1945 and that hasn\u2019t expanded by more than 2% annually since 2013.<\/p>\n

The debt-laden power utility, described by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as the biggest threat to South Africa\u2019s economy, put the country at risk of a second recession in as many years after it implemented the most severe power cuts to date in December.<\/p>\n

Gross domestic product growth likely slowed to 0.4% in 2019, the World Bank said.<\/p>\n

The World Bank sees GDP growth averaging 1.4% in 2021-22 if President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s administration is able to ramp up structural reforms and address policy uncertainty, and if there\u2019s a recovery in public and private sector investment.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Longer load shedding on Thursday<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Bank is the first key institution to cut its economic growth forecast for South Africa to below 1% for 2020 due to electricity supply concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":290474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-365140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365140","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365146,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365140\/revisions\/365146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}