South Africa's economy. Tough times ahead

South Africa's economy. Tough times ahead

Feb 12th 2009 | JOHANNESBURG
(Source: From The Economist print edition)

But Africa’s biggest economy may still recover quickly from a looming recession.
ANY lingering hopes that South Africa might escape relatively unscathed from the global economic storms were dashed on February 5th when Tito Mboweni, governor of the central bank, predicted that Africa’s biggest economy would go through “a rough patch for the next three to four years”. Any politician who did not pass on that message to voters was “living in cloud-cuckoo-land”.
The same day, in an attempt to stimulate the economy and mitigate the effects of a recession, the bank chopped interest rates by a full percentage point to 10.5%, the biggest single reduction since 2003. As Mr Mboweni confessed at the time, he personally would have preferred a two-point cut. This week he signalled that if growth figures for the last quarter of 2008, due out on February 24th, were worse than expected, there could be a further cut in rates ahead of the monetary-policy committee’s next scheduled meeting in April.
Like the rest of Africa, South Africa had until recently been doing relatively well. Between 2004 and 2007, its economy grew by a perky 5% a year, after averaging a still respectable 3% over the previous decade. Last year it had been expected to expand by around 4%. But after slowing to a virtual standstill (up just 0.2%) in the third quarter—its worst performance in a decade—it will be lucky to reach 3% for the whole year. In the final quarter, the economy probably actually shrank, by as much as 4.6%, some economists reckon. Read more...

South African Government Information

2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™

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With anticipation growing ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™, the official Match Schedule has been released. To find out where the games will be played in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Mangaung/Bloemfontein, Nelson Mandela Bay/Port Elizabeth, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Rustenburg, Tshwane/Pretoria between 11 June and 11 July 2010.

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/tournament/preliminarydraw/64/42/24/2010fwc_matchschedule_1103.pdf