
Top stories






More news










Marketing & Media
Chicken Licken bravely debones a rare phobia with their latest campaign
Joe Public 3 days



The future effects are radically uncertain and all but impervious to serious modelling, not least because so little can be known for certain about the evolution of the epidemic itself and how societies will respond, much less how these will impact on the economy in the short, medium and long terms.
What is certain is that South Africa’s economy will shrink this year relative to last year. In this context, two key concerns for policymakers, firms and banks is what effect it will have on South Africa’s economic output and how quickly will we recover.
Estimates of the size of the contraction that we will experience this year range from 4% to 15% of GDP depending on whom you ask and whether you look at their most optimistic or most pessimistic scenarios.
Inspired by comments made by Prof. Paul Romer in a recent webinar on the impact of the coronavirus on the US and how to think about the preconditions for opening the economy after the lockdowns, the Centre for Development and Enterprise released a report which seeks to warn policymakers not to assume that the economy that emerges after the lockdown will be capable of generating even the rate of growth (inadequate as it was) that South Africa experienced over the past decade. It suggests that the damage done by the epidemic may necessitate very significant economic reforms if South Africa is ever to fully recover.
One way to think about this is to think about what happened after the global financial crisis (GFC).
Key findings
Download the report: Covid-19: Are we asking the right questions about the nature of the economic recovery?