SA economic transactions weaken in September
Domestic economy performs poorly quarter-on-quarter
The BankservAfrica Economic Transaction Index (BETI) – a measure of all South African interbank transactions under R5 million – weakened in September, reflecting a slower year-on-year growth of 1.4%.
After a slight recovery in August, the September BETI data showed a month-on-month decline of -0.9%, according to Dr Caroline Belrose, Head of Fraud and Data Analytics at BankservAfrica.
“The recent history of the BETI Index shows how the real value of transactions changes direction almost on a monthly basis,” explains Dr Belrose.
The data also shows the domestic economy was far weaker in Q3 than in the previous quarter.
“Since December 2015, there have been no year-on-year positive changes of over 1.6%. When taking the South African population growth of 1.6% into account, it is apparent that the average person will experience declining income levels in this weaker economic environment,” according to Mike Schüssler, Chief Economist at Economists dotcoza.
Nominally the value of transactions continues to increase after taking inflation into account – but still, the growth in transactions declined to levels well below 2% on a year-on-year basis.
Transaction and product category growth
Growth in the number of transactions for September was 6.8% while the standardised nominal value of the transactions that make up the BETI was R774 billion. This is an increase of 7.6% in nominal terms.
Major declines were evident for cheque transactions as the move to electronic forms of payment continue. The value of cheque transactions declined 8.2% in nominal terms.
Real-time clearing is the fastest growing transaction category with nominal growth of 28.5%. Authenticated early debit orders have also been growing rapidly with a change of 24.7% in nominal terms on a year ago.
The overall value per transaction in the South African banking system grew by 2.4%, far less than the consumer price inflation rate, Schüssler adds.
