Slight pick-up for economic transactions in October

File image: IOL

File image: IOL

Published Nov 13, 2019

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JOHANNESBURG - Economic transactions in October slightly picked-up, with this improvement potentially continuing into Black Friday , according to BankservAfrica, Africa’s leading automated clearing house.

The BankservAfrica Economic Transaction Index (Beti) for October was 127.4, representing a 0.2 percent monthly growth.

Shergeran Naidoo, the head of stakeholder engagements: BankservAfrica, said “With next month’s data containing Black Friday spend, it could potentially lead to two successive months of volume growth.” said Naidoo.

FNB this week forecast a 15 percent increase in the total number of transactions during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Naidoo said the nominal standardised value of transactions was R895.4 billion in October, a slight reprieve from the R876.1bn in September. “As the standardised nominal value takes the number of weekdays and weekends, along with holidays into account, this increase is significant after three months of declines in nominal terms,” said Naidoo.

He said the number of transactions increased to above 101.5 million again, which was more positive than the 99 million in the previous month.

But the moving quarterly change remained in negative territory after experiencing a 2.2 percent decline, he said.

Naidoo said the year-on-year Beti experienced the deepest decline since March 2019 even without the recovery and given that there had been positive year-on-year growth from April to September.

The Beti data revealed that the South African economy was now in the 71st month of the downward phase of the business cycle – the longest phase of decline since 1945.

“October’s monthly increase provides a glimmer of hope, but the overall data should not be disregarded,” said Mike Schüssler, the chief economist at economists.co.za.

“While the long-term trend is lower, the economy is still growing, but at a pace that is lower than the population growth rate,” said Schüssler.  

BUSINESS REPORT

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