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Consumer, business confidence in SA economy still falling - index

Cape Town - Declining transactional activities reflected in BankservAfrica's Economic Transaction Index (Beti) for September and October are concerning for SA’s main economic drivers, according to Mike Schüssler, chief economist at Economists dotcoza.

Economic transactional activity in South Africa declined for the second consecutive month in October, the latest Beti shows.

Schüssler says it is likely that this will continue with weakening levels of confidence in the economy growing.
 
The Beti gives an economy-wide picture of activity across SA. It shows transactional values declined again on a month-on-month basis in October. This was also evident on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
 
“Despite October having more weekdays than most months this year, economic transactions still declined, indicating business and consumer confidence is still lacking in the economy,” says Schüssler.
 
The Beti is an indicator of economic performance expectation which is reflected in the September and October performance as well as quarterly.

Downward movement

This downward movement may become more pronounced in the following months with October’s mini budget showing early indications of higher taxes, bigger trade deficits and an economy at risk, according to Schüssler.
 
“Already the data so far for October shows manufacturing is still declining. Although the additional days last month contributed to a slight improvement for car sales, these were still flat when compared to other months. The drought in the Western Cape and parts of the Northern Cape has had further negative impacts on the South African economy,” he added.
 
In his view, the lowered Beti in the past two months points to broad declines in the economy in real seasonally adjusted terms. Both of these suggest another fall in the South African economy and the real possibility of gross domestic product (GDP) declining on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Should this happen, it will be the sixth GDP decline since 2011.
 
On a year-on-year basis, the Beti is still up by 0.8%, in line with the expected GDP growth rate a year ago. In contrast to the real decline in the Beti, the average size of the economic transactions increased to R8 632, which is up sharply up from September 2016 when it was unusually low, says Schüssler. 

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