Economy / General

SA country outlook - inflation to peak above 8% in 2014

2014 Market and economic outlook

The JSE last year set a fresh record high against a South African economy that will probably fail to achieve even 2% growth, and financial divergences like this were common across the globe. Essentially, this is the effect of the extremely easy monetary policies of the major central banks, with interest rates at zero, reinforced through massive amounts of quantitative easing (QE). The US Federal Reserve is to start tapering QE this year, which has the potential to significantly affect the SA economy and financial markets.

Retail sales growth set to lose steam…

Price hikes partly make up for a significant slowdown in volume growth during 2014Q1.

Tax reform is vital in order to achieve growth objectives

Since 1994, there have been extensive debates about the dire need for education reform, health reform and retirement reform; but we have only touched on the issue of tax reform. However, there is a desperate need for this to take place if the country is going to come anywhere near realising the targets set out by the National Development Plan.