JOHANNESBURG - Data from Statistics South Africa today showed that South Africa’s economy grew more than expected last year after a strong third and fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) performance. Stats SA said that the GDP in South Africa expanded 1.50% in the fourth quarter of 2017 over the same quarter of the previous year.
When looked on a quarter-on-quarter basis, South Africa’s GDP expanded 3.10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 over the previous quarter.
Market consensus was of a 1.8 percent fourth-quarter rise in growth, while the annual growth rate was forecast at 1.4 percent. South Africa's economy showed marginal positive growth for 2016, although it then contracted in the fourth quarter of the year. With similar contraction in the first quarter of 2017 that saw the economy enter a technical recession for the first time since 2009.
According to macroeconomics website Trading Economics, GDP Annual Growth Rate in South Africa averaged 2.83 percent from 1994 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 7.10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006 and a record low of -2.60 percent in the second quarter of 2009.