President Jacob Zuma (Jaco Marais, Die Burger)
The gross domestic product at end of 2015 by the International Monetary Fund “IMF” as published by Bloomerg has placed South Africa 1st on the list of high economies in Africa with $301 Billion ahead of Nigeria’s GDP of $296 billion a difference of $5 billion.
This is no mean a stride, because the South African economy shrank an annualized 1.2 percent on quarter in the three months to March of 2016, compared to a 0.4 percent growth in the previous quarter and worse than market expectations of 0.1 percent drop. It is the first contraction since the second quarter last year, dragged down by mining and quarrying and transport sectors. On a yearly basis, the GDP fell 0.2 percent, marking the first drop since the fourth quarter of 2009. GDP Growth Rate in South Africa averaged 2.97 percent from 1993 until 2015, reaching an all time high of 7.60 percent in the fourth quarter of 1994 and a record low of -6.10 percent in the first quarter of 2009 as reported by the Statistics South Africa.
After the turbulence of choosing between Pravin Gordhan over Nhlahla Nene as finance minster to lead the economy, it still made a gain of 16 per cent against the dollar since the start of year whiles the Nigeria lost over a third of it naira in value.
Before this 2016 rebasing of South Africa’s GDP it had pendulum between third place to Egypt in 2016 and second place to Nigeria in 2014.
By GCBM
