South Africa’s GDP grew by 0,9% in the third quarter of 2009 on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis, compared to a revised decline of 2,8% in the second quarter, data showed on Tuesday.
With the third-quarter rise, the economy exits its first recession in 17 years, after three consecutive quarters of contraction.
A Reuters poll of 17 economists last week showed the GDP number was expected to come in at 0,2% on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis and fall by 2,7% on an unadjusted year-on-year basis.
Statistics South Africa also revised annual economic growth for 2008 upwards to 3,7% and 5,5% for 2007.
Mike Schussler, the director at Economists.co.za, said he had been pleasanty surprised.
”It is good for the rand and equities, but let’s wait and see how this pans out.”
Elize Kruger, an economist at KADD Capital, said: ”It is exactly in line with my forecast, which I am grateful for, as the positiveness of this figure is that we have exited the recession in the third quarter.
”Hopefully it confirms that the worst is over,” said Kruger.
Doret Els, economist at Quantum Asset management, said the good news in the figure was that the manufacturing industry had grown.
”It’s good to see that it may have reached a bottom in the second quarter. However, consumer spending continues to be under significant strain as shown in the retail and wholesale sector and the finance and real-estate sector.”
Russell Lamberti, an economist at ETM, said the figure was better than he had expected.
”We knew it wasn’t going to be a broad-based recovery, but a couple of sectors are pulling us positive. Manufacturing is in line with expectations, but what is interesting is how the construction sector, although remaining positive, growth is starting to slow and that will be a pattern as we go into 2010.
”Overall though a positive number, even though the last quarter was revised higher, we were still able to post nearly 1% growth this last quarter.”
Annabel Bishop, an economist at Investec Group Economics, said the figure closed the door on further rate cuts, and potentially brought the timing of the first rate hike closer.
”The economy technically left recession in Q3.09 on the basis of the data published by Statistics SA today, but a sharp, V-shaped recovery is still unlikely in SA due to its heavy dependence on global demand and the degree of job losses and company failures to date.” – Reuters, I-Net Bridge
Fedusa worried about job losses
Meanwhile, the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) said it was concerned about job losses.
”Fedusa is still concerned about the 700Â 000 jobs that have been lost over the last year that have no guarantee of being recovered,” Fedusa general secretary Dennis George said.
”Even though we are seeing an uncertain growth pattern of the economy we are concerned that those workers who have lost their jobs will not regain their jobs as the economy grows,” he said.
Fedusa urged the government to take measures to ensure jobs were created and schemes were created to re-introduce retrenched workers to the job market.
George said Fedusa was ”very pleased” with the results of third-quarter GDP.
”With the onset of a global economic crisis, South Africans saw how the economy has suffered and shrunk over the last four quarters,” he said.
”It’s Fedusa’s opinion that the economy is slowly recovering from this negative growth, and as such is experiencing a U-shaped recovery pattern in which growth is developing upwards after a negative downward slope, yet the progress is weak and protracted.” – Sapa