JOHANNESBURG – There might be a slight glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the South African economy as the BankservAfrica Economic Transaction Index (Beti) for October shows the real value of transactions in the month recorded the strongest monthly and quarterly changes since December 2017.
“The standardised transaction value which accounts for the number of working days and weekends reached R871.7 billion in October, representing a monthly increase of 7.9 percent,” Shergeran Naidoo, the head of stakeholder relations: BankservAfrica said.
He said “at the same time, the number of actual transactions reached the highest level ever with over 107.5 million transactions going through the South African interbank payment system.”
Naidoo noted that the number of transactions increased by 1.4 percent, but the average value of the transactions declined for the 18th consecutive month.
Mike Schüssler, the chief economist at Economists dotcoza, warned that even though the Beti was offering some hope that the economy might be recovering, it had shown before that one great data point did not make a trend or a story.