Since the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) began publishing projections, its projections for current year and next year South African GDP growth (as projected at the time of the March Monetary Policy Committee Statement) have been more optimistic than those of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) (as published in April). The IMF’s inflation projections have been slightly less accurate for the current year and one-year ahead, on average.
Footnote
To give a sense of directional accuracy, the chart below does not use absolute forecast errors, since the IMF under-predicted current year inflation and had a large pre-COVID-19 one-year ahead forecast error.
