Good evening.
Let me start today’s address with two questions. First, if you compare South Africa to other countries, how do we rank in relation to growth? And second, how do we rank for inflation?
As you know, economic growth in South Africa has been weak, averaging a mere 0.8% annually over the past ten years. This growth performance is worse than that of 87% of other economies. The few countries doing worse than us are those that suffered major disasters, like war or macroeconomic collapse. Examples include Sudan, Lebanon and Ukraine. Given that we have had peace and basic macroeconomic stability, South Africa’s growth is extremely disappointing.
What about inflation? Here again we underperform. Our average inflation rate over ten years is 5.1%.3 This is not a catastrophe. Venezuela and Zimbabwe have excessive inflation rates of 9 000% and 251% respectively.
