COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the economy, says economist

JOHANNESBURG – PWC Chief Economist Lullu Krugel says it will take years before the country’s economy gets back to where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

She was speaking during an interview earlier as the nation awaits Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s emergency budget speech on Wednesday afternoon.

“Unfortunately, I must say our own scenarios that we have calculated in terms of our GDP impact shows that the impact or contraction this year is around 8 percent.

“And then the economy slowly starting to recover and by 2024 and in a good scenario and things could even get worse,” she said.

Krugel also says the government will have to cut expenditure to get the economy growing again.

“If we don’t change expenditure if we don’t have critical lanes around how do we fund SOEs the overall government employee bill which is around 40 percent of governing cost we are not going to change things around…we can change around but we will have to change the way we do things.”
– eNCA