JOHANNESBURG - Statistics South Africa said the production of food and beverages boosted manufacturing output for the first quarter of this year.This, said Stats SA, helped to push economic growth out of the negative territory after the gross domestic product expanded by 0.4% in the first three months of the year.Statistician-General at Stats SA Risenga Maluleke said the finance and real estate sectors also helped the economy to avert a technical recession.
"In finance, we have seen that financial intermediation, insurance, pension funding as well as real estate and business services have shown a strong contribution." Maluleke said it's difficult to quantify the impact of the record high load shedding seen over the past few months. "We don't measure the impact of load shedding directly but let us look at the area of utilities - that is electricity, gas and water. We see that it decreased by 1% but that decrease was largely driven by decreases in the consumption of electricity and water and of course, when there is load shedding, there is no electricity to consume."
Latest #GDP release shows that 8 industries recorded growth in Q1:2023. Join #StatsSA on @TurfFM at 12h15 today as we discuss the latest Gross Domestic Product statistical release.