adminJOHANNESBURG. — South Africa’s economy, the biggest on the continent, grew at the slowest pace in more than four years in the third quarter as strikes at car plants cut manufacturing output. Gross domestic product rose an annualised 0,7 percent compared with the second quarter, when output increased a revised 3,2 percent, Statistics South Africa said in a report released in Johannesburg yesterday.
The median estimate of 19 economists in a Bloomberg survey was 1 percent.
Strikes by workers at carmakers including Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Volkswagen AG in the third quarter curbed output from an industry that accounts for almost 10 percent of the economy. The Reserve Bank last week cut its 2013 economic growth forecast to 1,9 percent from 2 percent and kept the benchmark repurchase rate at the lowest level in more than three decades to help support consumer spending.
“The main reason for the slow growth was the bad manufacturing performance,” Ilke van Zyl, an economist at Vunani Securities Ltd in Johannesburg, said. “Apart from the strike action, private sector consumption growth slowed down, government expenditure slowed and there was heightened uncertainty in global financial markets”
Manufacturing output, which makes up 15 percent of the economy, declined an annualised 6,6 percent in the third quarter, the only industry to contract, according to the statistics agency.
“The strikes had a huge impact on the economy,” Gerhardt Bouwer, executive manager of national accounts at Statistics South Africa, said in an interview.
Strikes at car plants and vehicle component makers cost the industry at least R20 billion in lost revenue, according to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa. — Bloomberg.
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