South Africa: Economy In Recession, Agriculture Takes Hardest Knock

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3 March 2020
allAfrica.com
By Esther Rose

Cape Town — New figures released by Statistics South Africa have shown that the country's economy shrank by 1,4% in the fourth quarter of 2019.

This follows a contraction of 0.8% in the third quarter, which means that the economy was in recession for the last half of 2019.

A recession is when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) falls for two consecutive quarters.

This is South Africa's third recession since 1994.

For the whole of 2019, the South African economy grew by only 0.2% (in real terms). In 2018, it saw growth of only 0.8%.

The fourth-quarter decline is larger than economists predicted, as the economy battles the fallout of load shedding, according to Fin24.

Seven out of 10 industries contracted in the fourth quarter, with agriculture (-7.6%) taking the biggest hit.

More details to follow.

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