While vaccines are a priority the government also needs to implement structural reforms.
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said that due to the Covid-19 lockdown, the release of the June quarterly bulletin and two statistical documents has been detrimentally affected.
The macroeconomic statistics, published by the SARB in the quarterly bulletin, are compiled by integrating statistics released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA).
SARB said in a statement on Monday their economic statistics department has always met its statistical commitments regarding original release schedules, in accordance with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) special data dissemination standard.
“However, the Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on the compilation of certain economic statistics due to the difficulties experienced in the collection of data from respondents,” the central bank said.
The bulletin will now be released on 16 July.
Stats SA announced in mid-April that gross domestic product (GDP) statistics for the first quarter of 2020 would be released on 30 June, instead of the original release date of 2 June.
The delays will also impact on two other statistical releases: “The release of the current account of the balance of payments (BOP), which follows that of the GDP by two working days, has changed from 4 June to 2 July,” SARB said.
(Compiled by Sandiswie Mbhele)
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