WATCH: Talking business during 2023

After the last of the lockdowns were suspended and life seemed to return to normal, we were looking forward to a more “normal” year.

We thought that food prices had stabilised after the sharp increases following the war in Ukraine, that the economy would grow a bit more in 2023 and that interest rates would not increase anymore. But we had a surprise waiting for us: 2023 was not a normal year at all.

We had to contend with a stop-go economy as one economist called it, with the inflation rate giving us a few scares. And then there was the repo rate that increased twice by 50 basis points. Consumers did not have a good year at all.

My colleague on the business desk, Vukosi Maluleke, joined me in the studio to talk about the business year that was.

Credit stress reports show that people who used the low interest rates leading up to the first increase in November 2021 to buy houses and cars now battle to meet their monthly repayments due to the increases in interest rates.

Employment, or rather, unemployment, remained a major problem. While Stats SA’s Quarterly Employment Statistics for the third quarter shows that 31 000 jobs were added from July to September, bringing the level of employment in South Africa to 10 176 000, only 256 000 jobs were added between September last year and September this year.

The latest data from Stats SA shows the official unemployment rate declined by only 0.7 percentage points from 32.6% in the second quarter to 31.9% in the third quarter of the year. However, employment cannot grow if the economy does not grow and the decrease in economic growth of 0.2% for the third quarter was worse than expected after two consecutive quarters of growth.

Economists think a recession is certainly possible as port congestion and load shedding have worsened considerably. In addition, business confidence slipped again in the fourth quarter due to sentiment among new car dealers declining by a huge 24 points, outweighing the 15 point increase in retail confidence.

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