Daniel Mminele: The performance of and outlook for the South African economy

Address by Mr Daniel Mminele, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, at the Economist Corporate Network event, Johannesburg, 30 October 2017.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.

Thank you to The Economist for inviting me to come and address you on the topic 'The performance of and outlook for the South African economy'. This is a very pertinent topic, which could not be more relevant at this stage.

Last week, when presenting the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, Finance Minister Gigaba announced that National Treasury had revised its forecasts for domestic GDP1 growth to 0.7% in 2017 and 1.1% in 2018, an adjustment of 0.6 and 0.9 percentage points respectively, from the projections made in February. These forecasts are in line with those released two weeks earlier by the IMF2 in its October 2017 World Economic Outlook, with the IMF similarly having scaled down its forecasts for South African GDP growth, by 0.3 and 0.1 percentage points for 2017 and 2018 respectively.

1 gross