The South African formal business sector generated R2,17 trillion in turnover in the third quarter of 2016. To put this into perspective, imagine if you drew this amount in R200 bills and went about giving away a bill every second. It would take 344 years to get rid of all the bills in this way!   read more »

MEDIA ADVISORY                                                                                           17 January 2017   Release of the Living Conditions Survey and the new weights for the Consumer Price Index (CPI)   Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) will release the results of the Living Conditions Survey (LCS) 2014/2015 and the new weights for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday, 27 January 2017 at   read more »

Come join us as we tell a story of South African business performance over time. There are three elements to this story, taken from Stats SA’s latest Annual financial statistics (AFS) report1: income, expenditure and profit. First, let’s explore income. The income generated by the formal business2 sector has increased consistently, except for the dip   read more »

Local government elections, increased mining of iron ore, water restrictions and reduced electricity consumption. Find out more about these, as well as other factors, that influenced economic growth in the third quarter. The South African economy grew by 0,2%1 quarter-on-quarter (compared with 3,5% in the second quarter), according to estimates of real gross domestic product.   read more »

Media advisory                                                                                                              01 December 2016          Statistician-General to release Gross domestic product (GDP), Q3 2016     The Statistician-General of South Africa, Dr Pali Lehohla, will release the Gross   read more »

Economic growth can be reported in a number of different ways. Annual growth, quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year are terms that are commonly used in the context of gross domestic product (GDP). What do these terms mean? In preparation for Stats SA’s next release of GDP data on 6 December, this article explores the different ways in   read more »

The continent is working towards attaining “the Africa we want”. Key to achieving this goal, through the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063, are quality and relevant statistics.   African Statistics Day is celebrated each year on 18 November. Africa celebrates this day to raise awareness of the importance of statistics in all aspects of   read more »

To bean or not to bean – a look at the price of your cup of coffee   Coffee. The lifeblood of many. The cup that jumpstarts your morning. The lack thereof creates zombies in offices across the world daily. The joys of drinking coffee are beautifully expressed in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Coffee Cantata, which   read more »

 Media advisory                                                                                          19 September 2016   Release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), August 2016   The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for August 2016 will be released at a media briefing on Wednesday, 21 September 2016 in Pretoria. The CPI is the primary indicator for the measurement of monetary policy and changes in   read more »

Industry growth rates depend on many factors, and the South African manufacturing industry is no exception. The state of the local and global economy and the rand exchange rate are some of the factors that are watched closely when assessing the performance of manufacturing production.   Figure 1 shows the severe impact of the global   read more »