OPINION
Way too early to say
There are many jokes about economists. To help explain this, while not a joke, Friedrich von Hayek said in his speech to a Nobel Prize banquet in 1974 that he actually didn’t think economists should be awarded the prize.
He had a deeper point about the risks of politicizing authority in the often nebulous social sciences, which he certainly didn’t think was a joke.
But still, here’s a real joke. How many economists does it take to replace a light bulb?
No. It’s one of those newfangled LED types and is fine. Realizing this, an unknown number of economists run off to adjust their models.
But unlike jokes about lawyers or politicians, the jokes about economists tend to the actual professional subject, not their ethics. But the politics of it can be seen in how people react to things like GDP figures.
SA recently received new figures on this. SA’s statistics (pre-revision) show that SA’s GDP grew 0.4% quarter on quarter in the first three months of the year – that’s the most important figure – and is seasonally adjusted real growth (SA also has four ).
However, the nominal (meaning in name only) figure, excluding inflation and seasons, was R35 billion lower, meaning there was actually less money (the actual thing behind the name) flying around. But before you accuse Stats SA of doing something unreliable to make people with a monopoly on violence happy (de jure or nominal), in the fourth quarter nominal GDP was R1 billion higher, but real GDP was still falling (a surprise and revised) 1.1%.
Therefore, in both real and nominal terms, SA has avoided a technical recession until at least the end of the second quarter, nominal, or third, in real terms. A technical recession is two consecutive quarters of “negative growth,” a descriptive if not subjective term, but it’s hardly an exciting number to talk about unemployment in threes.
Still, that’s the science of it, not a recession. But is SA in some kind of recession, at least one? Maybe a lot? Probably yes, or definitely.
Back to bleak science, albeit a little more relativistic. The International Monetary Fund (IMF, trending on SA Twitter on Thursday) is forecasting SA growth of 0.1% in 2023, versus 2% for the world as a whole. If the economists hit their KPAs this year, it means SA will outperform Germany (down 0.3% and the UK, down 0.1%). It will probably do much better than Sri Lanka too, you really hope so.
But even if it’s science, it’s a few examples, and socially, a better approximation might include the numbers of people. In social terms, this IMF forecast probably sums it up:
IMF 2023 article IV consultation report, p57
Tweet of the day
Chart of the day
Number of the day
-1.4%
The drop in GDP per capita that the IMF expects for South Africa in 2023, with growth reaching 0.3% in 2024.
Earlier:
TAKE STOCK | Money well spent? Moti’s courtship with the media goes awry after a gag order
TAKE STOCK | Private sector participation a silver lining in government ineptitude at the gold level
TAKE STOCK | ‘Golf Fields’ was not afraid of Chris Griffith after handing him clubs and sword
TAKE STOCK | Why SA’s petrolheads don’t have to fear zero carbon
TAKE STOCK | SAA’s private problems are yours too
TAKE STOCK | Actually, AngloGold’s exit has everything to do with SA
TAKE STOCK | Dis-Chem’s Retiring CEO: In the Backseat or the Backseat?
TAKE STOCK | Transaction Capital’s word soup – and the government’s ‘spustya rukava’ problem
TAKE STOCK | Eskom’s dark and smoky future could be good news for Thungela’s c(ash) pile
TAKE STOCK | New-look mining M&A – and failed Eskom probe is a double disaster
TAKE STOCK | Moti needs more than a rebrand – and where is the government’s investment promise?
TAKE STOCK | Old Mutual pays attention to the (wage) gap
TAKE STOCK | PIC has to call on RBPlat – and where is Herr Jooste?
TAKE STOCK | Twitter ceases to exist – more or less
TAKE STOCK | Glencore (trying) to get big on copper
TAKE STOCK | Mantashe puts his foot back in
TAKE STOCK | Bad timing in SA aviation – and how UNIQ is Shoprite’s new store name?
TAKE STOCK | The low Bain threshold and food prices are out of control
TAKE STOCK | Crypto Rise But For How Long, And Standout Moves At Transaction
TAKE STOCK | Facebook is getting slimmer and meaner
TAKE STOCK | Brian Molefe, amateur lawyer
TAKE STOCK | A future you don’t want to subscribe to
TAKE STOCK | The ANC’s Barbra Streisand moment?
TAKE STOCK | Have MPs read the rail white paper approved by the cabinet and can Eskom provide some good statistics?
TAKE STOCK | The struggling sugar industry gives Godongwana a nervous look and Telkom seems to be picking up speed
TAKE STOCK | The Magda U-turn – and SA’s big credit rush
TAKE STOCK | The cost of cybercrime and the state of the imprisoned country
TAKE STOCK | Eskom’s hard lessons for a zombie apocalypse
TAKE STOCK | Spar’s flawed thinking
TAKE STOCK | Nampak is locked in a corner
TAKE STOCK | Steinhoff’s troubling future for shareholders, and Telkom loses his suitors
News24 encourages freedom of expression and the expression of diverse views. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
