by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 9, 2020 | Daily Notes
The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has brought uncertainty in global trade because of disruptions it is causing in global supply chains and weakening demand. South Africa’s agricultural sector, which is export-orientated, is one of the sectors we had feared would be...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 8, 2020 | Daily Notes
Well, South Africa’s agricultural gross value-added didn’t quite expand by the same magnitude that I had expected but was nonetheless in a similar trend. I had pencilled an expansion of between 20% – 25% q/q on a seasonally adjusted and annualised rate (saar),...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 7, 2020 | Daily Notes
This is an important day in the South African economics calendar. At 11h30 this morning, Statistics South Africa will release GDP data for the second quarter of the year. Recent surveys of macro analysts’ forecasts of the second quarter GDP show that the South African...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 6, 2020 | Daily Notes
I’m making it a routine to use this Monday note to reflect on the two weekly data releases in the South African agricultural market, namely (1) the grain producer deliveries and (2) trade activity. For now, the focus on the producer deliveries data is on summer...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 3, 2020 | Daily Notes
Though SA is a net exporter of some grains, such as maize and barley, the country is not insulated from developments in the global grains market. International price movements in these commodities do influence trading conditions in the domestic market to an extent....
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 2, 2020 | Daily Notes
Agriculture is one of the sectors that will help create employment and economic activity in rural South Africa. I have argued in the previous blog entries that the South African government should instead recast its vision of agricultural development using Chapter Six...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 1, 2020 | Daily Notes
The reports of a potential La Niña event during the coming summer months presents mixed fortunes for Southern and East Africa’s agriculture. For parts of East Africa, the La Niña weather event typically correlates with below-average rainfall in the months between...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 31, 2020 | Daily Notes
The Zimbabwean government made an important statement about its maize production ambitions last week, which if fulfilled, would have implications on South Africa’s maize exports. The government aims to encourage farmers to plant 1.5 million hectares of maize,...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 30, 2020 | Daily Notes
Aside from various data publications that I wrote about last week, we also had two important releases in the South African agricultural market that I didn’t get to explore. Therefore, I will start this week by focusing on these data, namely (1) the weekly grain...
by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 28, 2020 | Saturday Read
SA’s agricultural sector had a solid start to 2020, with first-quarter gross value-added growing 27.8% quarter on quarter on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis (see Exhibit 1). I noted then that the succeeding quarters would be likely to continue to show...
