Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Johannesburg - There is a "very real" risk that South African could face an economic recession as a result of the current electricity crisis, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Wednesday.
"We have already been going through an economic slowdown [the electricity crisis] could push us into a recession," Sacci economist Richard Downing said.
He said annual economic growth could slow down to as little as one or two percent.
"It is apparent that the shortage of electricity does pose a severe threat to the production capacity of goods and services, since critical production time is lost due to electricity power shortages during working hours.
Even if the loss in output could be limited to five percent to ten percent of gross domestic product, it will be difficult to attain any growth in the economy in 2008."
Downing said the effects of the electricity crisis had not been fully captured in the current Business Confidence Index (BCI) for January 2008.
He said the effects would only be noticeable in the next three to four months.
The BCI for January 2008 released by Sacci on Wednesday measured 93.8 --after it declined to 94.8 in December 2007.