Gina Schoeman, South Africa economist for the Citibank Global Economics team.
I attended a S&P Dow Jones Global event on Tuesday where Gina delivered the keynote and here are my notes on what she said. Any errors are mine, not hers.
Gauteng is 35% of SA GDP.
Service delivery protests show strength of democracy.
People are leaving small towns due to lack of services and this erodes tax base, making service delivery even harder.
SONA watch list;
Watch the World Bank Ease of doing Business survey as good metric for Ramaphosa. We're 84th but where under 50 when Zuma took over.
SA union rate is 24% and dropping and will drop further.
Members are aging and youth are unemployed.
Household debt is 75%, down from 84% in 2010. But the nuance is in the data.
SA population growth is 1.5%. GDP growth has to exceed this for people to be getting richer.
Lack of rental inflation is a big driver of low inflation overall.
No VAT increase in the 2020 budget.
Moody downgrade is very likely, but don't worry about that. Worry about Fitch and Standard & Poor dropping us lower because it is now about the recovery.
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