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South Africa’s Power Problem is Taking a Huge Chunk Out its GDP

The Reserve Bank sees the country’s economic growth dwindling to 0.3% this year from 1.1% in 2022. The bank’s governor Lesetja Kganyago said that without power outages, South Africa’s GDP growth could have been at 2.3% this year. The central bank has been on record predicting that there will be 250 days of power blackout in 2023, which translates to a historic economic loss of $12.7 billion. There were more than 200 days of power rationing last year. World Bank’s data shows that the country’s economy slowed to 0.2 % year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022. It states: “The economy is projected to grow by 1.9% this year, a downward revision of 0.2 percentage point relative to early projections in April.”

SOURCE: QUARTZ AFRICA

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