ALISTER BULL, Johannesburg | Wednesday 3.15pm
SOUTH Africa looks set to round off 1999 with a batch of economic indicators confirming bright prospects for the year ahead as the country grapples with daunting levels of poverty and unemployment.
Economists polled by Reuters forecast benign inflation and money supply data that should not disturb mounting confidence that South Africa will chalk up respectable growth in 2000.
But they want more evidence before agreeing with optimists who believe the country is poised for a boom and not just a shallow cyclical bounce from 1998’s weak levels, when the economy teetered on recession after a savage rand crisis.
”In net terms the data will be moderately bullish … But it will not answer the question of whether we are about to begin a typical 18 month cyclical upswing or are at the start of a period of five years of growth,” said Nick Barnardt at AMB. A Reuters poll of economists forecast headline consumer and core inflation to remain unchanged at 1,7% and 8,0% year-on-year in November compared with the previous month. The data will be released on December 21.
Producer inflation, to be released on December 22, was also expected to hold at six percent, year-on-year, while money supply growth, out on December 29, was seen slowing. Closely watched trade data will be published later that day.
”Overall, this paints quite a benign scenario and we expect this story to feed into stronger financial markets, especially stocks, during the first half of the year,” said Nedcor chief economist Dennis Dykes in Johannesburg.– Reuters