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Document: Economic and Business Outlook for South Africa in 2012
Description
As the year draws to a close BUSA as usual offers an assessment of economic and business trends – and the possible outlook for the coming year. This is based on an evaluation of existing economic data, recent discussions at BUSA’s Economic Policy Committee and input from members of BUSA. What BUSA wishes to do by ‘looking into the crystal ball’ is to broadly unpack current economic trends, outline what certain trajectories of the SA economy might be in the immediate future, and identify some of!the policies which are relevant to our economic performance.
This assessment will therefore broadly revolve around:
- external and internal economic factors,
- the present and the future,
- threats and opportunities,
- counter cyclical and structural concerns for the SA economy around growth and employment in changed circumstances,
- the role of the private sector in promoting SA’s economic performance.
What strikes BUSA in particular at this juncture is that firstly the risk of the best forecasts by either the public or private sectors turning out to be wrong seems to be much higher now given global uncertainty and secondly, fiscal and monetary policy options for SA will contract or expand depending on growth performance.
In a nutshell, therefore it would seem that:
- a. the margin for error in economic forecasting has increased;
- b. the margin for error in policy has narrowed and a mistake in domestic policy could be costly.
Dealing with the economic outlook is therefore now an exercise in assessing the balance of risks and this has important implications for domestic policy. The more things go wrong globally, the more SA must look to the efficacy of its domestic policies and its international competitiveness.
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Publication Year
2011
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