SA ACTUALLY NOT IN A RECESSION - ECONOMIST

Cape Town - According to Economist Roelof Botha, South Africa is not in a recession. Botha was speaking at the Momentum Consult annual conference on Thursday. 

Statistics released by Statistics SA early this week showed the country Gross Domestic Policy(GDP) slipped into what is generally considered a technical recession - defined as two successive quarters of negative GDP growth, after GDP growth decreased by 0.7% in the second quarter of the year. This follows a restated contraction of -2.6% in the first quarter. The decrease in the country's GDP raised fears of another credit score downgrade.

However according to Botha, there is more than one way to define what a recession is. "The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) says one should compare GDP on a year-on-year (y/y) basis rather than on a quarterly basis. If you compare the second quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2017 one can see SA is not in a recession. That is a fact,” said Botha.

And in his view, the rand - which has lost 4.4% against the dollar so far this week - will also bounce back.