{"id":822917,"date":"2025-05-02T11:51:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T09:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=822917"},"modified":"2025-05-02T11:52:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T09:52:36","slug":"business-conditions-expected-to-worsen-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/822917\/business-conditions-expected-to-worsen-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Business conditions expected to worsen in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South African manufacturers turned more gloomy last month, blaming uncertainty fanned by global tariffs and domestic political strains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Absa Group&#8217;s purchasing managers\u2019 index, compiled by the Bureau for Economic Research, fell to 44.7 in April. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is its sixth consecutive month in contractionary territory, and is down by 4 percentage points compared with 48.7 in March. A number of sub-indexes also recorded declines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWorryingly, <strong>the index tracking expected business conditions in six months\u2019 time decreased further<\/strong>,\u201d Absa said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That gauge fell 9.4 points to 48.6 in April, edging below 50 points for the first time since November 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>New sales orders slumped by 12.8 points to 36.1 points,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The business activity index decreased 8.3 points to 40, and <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The employment index dropped 3.2 points to 42.9, and remained in contractionary territory for the 13th consecutive month.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The report also noted that the purchasing price index increased by 3.8 points to 68.3 last month, despite cuts in the price of fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Respondents turned \u201cdecidedly more negative\u201d in the month, Absa said, citing weak demand due to US President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war and doubts over the future of South Africa\u2019s governing coalition because of a standoff over a proposed increase in value-added tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The VAT saga at one stage looked like it might unravel the so-called government of national unity \u2014 whose formation after elections last year stoked investor confidence because of expectations that it would be more business-friendly \u2014 but that prospect appears to have been averted.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Treasury\u00a0ditched\u00a0its proposal to raise the VAT rate by half a percentage point this year and next after the Democratic Alliance, the second-largest party in the GNU, took it to court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana subsequently announced he would\u00a0present\u00a0a new budget on 21 May 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South African manufacturers turned more gloomy last month, blaming uncertainty fanned by global tariffs and domestic political strains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":822919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[29,1850,853],"class_list":["post-822917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-absa","tag-bloomberg","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822917","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=822917"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822922,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822917\/revisions\/822922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}