SA’s economic growth prospects keep diving

SA’s economic growth prospects keep going from bad to worse.

The International Monetary Fund is the latest key institution to slash the country’s growth forecast, which may have fallen into its second recession in as many years. It now expects the economy to expand by 0.7% in 2019, half of what it estimated in January, and similar to forecasts by the South African Reserve Bank and Bloomberg Economics.

The economy shrank the most in a decade in the first quarter of this year as the nation suffered the worst power outages since 2008.

The National Treasury, which forecast growth of 1.5% in the February budget, is expected to lower its prediction in the October mid-term budget.

While the World Bank’s 1.1% estimate seems to be an outlier, it was published as part of its mid-year Global Economic Prospects outlook on the same day that Statistics South Africa released data showing a much bigger-than-expected contraction for the three months through March.