The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) again left the repo rate unchanged at a record low of 3.5% in its November 2020 meeting. The SARB’s inflation forecast indicates that it will be below the mid-point of the 3% to 6% range due to the slow economic recovery. This implies limited upside for ...

In the midst of an unprecedented economic and health crisis one sector in our economy has outshone the rest. The agricultural sector expanded by almost 28% in the first quarter compared to the same period in 2019 and 15.1% in the second quarter. Agriculture was the only one of nine sectors in ...

Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural Economist at FNB South Africa – In just over a week’s time, the planting of summer crops particularly maize begins in the eastern producing areas of the country. The weather outlook is quite positive with a La Nina in the offing, a pattern characterised by ...

Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural Economist at FNB Against the backdrop of a contracting overall economy with South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) for 2020 forecast to decline by over 8% year-on-year (y/y), there is a silver lining in the agricultural sector outcomes for the next season. ...

Comment by Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural Economist at FNB Agri-Business After cutting the repo rate by 300 basis points so far this year, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) kept the rate unchanged at a record low of 3.5% in September 2020.The SARB considered risks to both growth and ...

By Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural Economist at FNB Agri-Business Following a good start to 2020 with first quarter agriculture GDP rebounding strongly by 28.6% quarter-on-quarter (q/q) seasonally adjusted annualised, the sector posted another impressive growth of 15% in the second quarter of ...

Comment by Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural economist at FNB Agri-Business Although the National Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) made a marginal upward adjustment to its earlier estimate of the country’s 2020/21 total grain and oilseed output, the 17.85 million tons is still one of the largest ...

Comment by Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural economist at FNB Agri-Business South Africa: The latest GDP update from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) shows an impressive rebound in agriculture forestry and fishing industry sector fortunes for the first quarter of 2020, coming in up 27.8% with a ...

Comment by Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural economist at FNB Agri-Business After lifting the 2019/20 maize harvest estimate by 2.4% to 15.89 million tons in its May 2020 report, the National Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) made a downward revision of the total maize output to 15.51 million tons ...

Comment by Paul Makube, Senior Agricultural economist at FNB Agri-Business South Africa : A combination of favourable crude oil price outlook, lower local inflation with risks to the downside, and economic contraction afforded the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) room to cut the repurchase ...