Economy GROWTH Cyril Ramaphosa has a recession on his hands To add to the gloom, the first-quarter contraction was also worse than initially reported BL PREMIUM

SA has plunged into a recession with a surprise 0.7% contraction in the second quarter of the year. “We are in recession. We reported a contraction in the first quarter even with revisions and now in the second quarter with a fall of 0.7%, we are in recession,” statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said in Pretoria on Tuesday.​ This is despite expectations from many economists that SA would narrowly miss a recession. The Bloomberg consensus was 0.6% growth. The rand weakened sharply shortly after Statistics SA released the news:

But it soon recovered somewhat: after weakening to R15.25/$ at about 11.45am, the rand appeared to be over its worst and was back under R15.20/$ by 11.48am. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product (GDP) and points to a prolonged slowdown in economic activity, which stunts job creation and damps investment. Following the revisions to growth figures for 2017, this makes it the first recession since the globa...