We are pleased to publish a new Policy Paper on macroeconomic data revisions in South Africa.
- We show that there is a lot of uncertainty around macroeconomic data in South Africa.
- In the case of GDP, estimates have tended to be revised upwards, by about 0.4 percentage point, on average.
- Investment, on the other hand, experienced larger revisions that GDP, with revisions tending to be negative.
- We show that the Reserve Bank’s business cycle indicators have experienced the largest revisions of the series considered, raising concerns over their usefulness for nowcasting economic growth.
The paper is publicly available here.
