Tax & Spend
Crises From Blackouts to Pandemic Cost South Africa $46 Billion
- The nation has been hit by six successive shocks since 2020
- GDP would have been 5% larger without them, government says
Employees work at a sewing machine during a load-shedding power outage period in Cape Town, South Africa.
Photographer: Dwayne Senior/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Six successive shocks over the past three years have cost South Africa’s economy as much as 850 billion rand ($46 billion), according to estimates from the department of trade and industry.
Between early 2020 and the third quarter of last year the economy was upended by two global and four local crises that manifested in quick succession, Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel said. The cumulative output lost to the South African economy as a result is estimated at between 650 billion rand and 850 billion rand, he said at the release of his department’s Industrial Policy & Strategy Review report.