"The ongoing energy supply problems, in addition to elevated input costs, rising interest rates and increasingly higher wage demands, are placing downward pressure on company profits and margins. Furthermore, a less favourable global economic backdrop adds to the economic challenges for many sectors," Kruger said.
BankservAfrica's head of stakeholder engagements, Shergeran Naidoo, said that more positively, the firm's Private Pensions Index rose to R10 016 in December in nominal terms, showing a 7.2% year-on-year growth. "The average nominal BPPI in 2022 came to R9 982, also 7.2% up on the 2021 average. In real terms, the average real private pension in 2022 was R9 576, 0.3% higher than a year earlier, as such preserving the purchasing power of pensioners," he said.
The data also shows that employment levels have picked up, a trend shown by recent StatsSA data, though playing catch-up for the job losses incurred from the Covid-19 pandemic. Adjusted for weekly payments, BankservAfrica’s data suggests that 1.072 million more salaries were paid into South Africans’ bank accounts in 2022 compared to the previous year.In times of uncertainty you need journalism you can trust.
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