PRETORIA: Growth of the South African economy, the biggest in Africa, accelerated sharply to three percent in the second quarter, official data showed yesterday, despite labour turmoil and a weak rand.
Gross domestic product grew from 0.9 in the first quarter to the fastest rate for a year, data from Statistics South Africa showed.
The 3.0 percent clip was roughly in line with market expectations.
The manufacturing sector grew at 1.7 percent and a pickup in business services also contributed to the rebound in growth.
Negative contributors were the mining industry, due to lower production, and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry.
But the figures do not necessarily signal a growth in momentum.
Strikes are continuing or looming in key sectors, including manufacturing, construction and mining. “We wouldn’t expect this pace of growth to continue going forward, there are lots of headwinds at the moment, infrastructure constraints, policy uncertainty, and global demand is not all that strong,” said Dennis Dykes, chief economist at Nedbank.
“The good news is that we’ve had some bounce back to more normalised conditions, obviously the outlook going forward is tainted,” said Dykes.
The central bank, facing weak domestic demand and a large output gap, has kept its main interest rate at a historically low 5.0 percent to boost growth.
But inflation rose higher than expected to 6.3 percent in July, breaching the central bank’s three to six percent target band.
AFP
