{"id":1221,"date":"2018-10-24T16:49:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T16:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2018-10-24T16:49:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T16:49:46","slug":"sa-growth-outlook-revised-downwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/news\/sa-growth-outlook-revised-downwards","title":{"rendered":"SA Growth outlook revised downwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

South Africa\u2019s growth outlook has been revised downwards to 0.7% in 2018, said National Treasury on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe National Treasury forecasts that GDP growth will slow to 0.7% in 2018, down from 1.3% last year, before rising to 1.7% in 2019 and 2.1% in 2020,\u201d said Treasury as Finance Minister Tito Mboweni tabled his maiden Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) in Parliament.<\/p>\n

Treasury said that the country\u2019s economic outlook is weaker than projected in the February 2018 Budget, which forecast 1.5% and 1.8% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2018 and 2019, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese revisions reflect lower production by agriculture and mining in the first half of the year, as well as a lack of new investment,\u201d said the MTBPS statement while also adding that agriculture and mining are expected to return to moderate growth in the next year.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, business and consumer confidence are expected to improve gradually over the medium term.<\/p>\n

On inflation, the MTBPS document stated that higher inflation is expected during the remainder of 2018 in response to administered price increases.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeadline inflation is projected to average 4.9% in 2018, rising to 5.4% by 2021 as food price inflation returns to its historic average,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

On investment, Treasury said the country has experienced an extended period of weak investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowth in gross fixed-capital formation, after slowing to 0.1% in the first half of 2018, is expected to measure 0.9% for the year as a whole, and 2.9% by 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cLow levels of demand and prolonged policy uncertainty have contributed to anaemic investment growth,\u201d said Treasury.<\/p>\n

In recent months, government has worked actively to improve the investment climate by strengthening governance in state institutions and removing policy bottlenecks in energy and mining.<\/p>\n

This comes on the back of President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s announcement of South Africa<\/a> seeking to bring in at least R1.2 trillion worth of investment over a five year period. – SAnews.gov.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s growth outlook has been revised downwards to 0.7% in 2018, said National Treasury on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,17,475,1],"tags":[746,591,15],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-finance","category-investment","category-news","tag-746","tag-national-treasury","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}