South Africa can turn its economy around: IMF

August 16, 2023 Siyabonga Mtangana

South Africa could dramatically boost economic growth if the country fixed its fraying transport network and public electricity utility, the International Monetary Fund said.

“If all the structural things are tackled, we believe growth can go up to 2.5-3%,” Max Alier, the IMF’s resident representative to South Africa, said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

South Africa grew 1.9% last year and activity will slip to just 0.3% in 2023, according to economists polled by Bloomberg, as electricity outages at troubled state-owned utility Eskom and rail and port bottlenecks take their toll.

The Reserve Bank estimates that load shedding alone shaved 3.2 percentage points from GDP last year and will likely cut another two percentage points off growth in 2023.

Steps to improve the power situation – including relaxing restrictions on private power generation – could see growth next year advance to 1.7%, IMF forecasts show.

Given the public finance restraints faced by South Africa, Alier said the goal should be to remove obstacles to mobilise private sector capital.

“The public sector has very limited fiscal space to provide the needed resources,” he said. “You need to create the conditions for the private sector to be willing to put the investments in.” — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP