South African Market Insights
Latest updates to our website
We take a look at the announcement that the current Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has been appointed for another time by President Cyril Ramaphosa. With this announcement two new deputy governors were also announced, one a former DDG of Economic Statistics at Statistics South Africa (Stats SA)
We take a look at the latest trade data released by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and focus on South Africa's exports to the United States of America and imports from the United States so far in 2019. The USA is a very significant market for South Africa, with it regularly featuring as on of South Africa's top 3 trading partners both in terms of exports but for imports as well.
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We take a look at the joint announcement/statement released by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). One wonders why they would release this statement at this point in time. Do they feel the pressure being placed by civil society, economists and markets alike on the SARB to cut interest rates and to broaden the SARB's mandate to focus more on growth necessitated this statement? Possibly so. At the end of the day the National Treasury has the final say on the mandate of the SARB. Perhaps it was released to comfort markets that no significant changes will take place soon and that the SARB remains independent.
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We take a look at the latest producer inflation numbers for final manufactured as well as intermediate goods and compare this to the overall imports inflation numbers of South Africa and ask whether higher local producer inflation levels are pushing more and more local wholesalers and retailers to rather import goods instead of having them manufactured locally?
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We take a look at the latest weekly trading statistics as published by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. And the number of trades, the volume and value of trades are all down significantly compared to a year ago. In addition to this net buying of shares by foreigners are a lot lower than it was 12 months ago, showing that there is still a fair amount of risk avoidance in the markets. |
The question on everyone's lips these days is how to fix South Africa's economy which has been struggling for years on end now. South Africa's economy has been growing at rates well below its population growth as well as well below the growth rates of its BRICS peers and some of its peers on the African continent. So why is South Africa's economy struggling so much and how can this be fixed relatively easily?
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We take a look at the latest trade statistics numbers which shows that for May 2019, South Africa had a positive trade balance with the rest of the world of R1.7 billion. So we exported R1.7 billion more in goods during May 2019 than what we imported from the rest of the world. We also take a look at South Africa's top 5 export destinations and its top 5 import origins
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We take a look at the latest gross nominal savings rate of South Africans as calculated and published by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Do we as South African households, South African companies or the South African government save enough? In fact do we save at all? We know South Africa's government spends way more than it collects in taxes so what about South African companies and households?
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We take a look at the latest banking sector information published by the South African Reserve Bankand find that gross loans and advances issued by banks have grown significantly over the last year while the impaired advances from banks increased sharply showing consumers are struggling to pay back their outstanding debt
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We take a look at the currency data of South Africa, Turkey and Chile supplied to us by our friends at PSG and compare these three emerging market economies currencies and their performance against the mighty US dollar over the course of the last two years. We as South Africans might be complaining about out exchange rate but just be happy its not the Turkish Lira.