Gross savings by corporates climbed to 15.9% of nominal gross domestic product from 10% in the prior quarter, data in the South African Reserve Bank’s Quarterly Bulletin published on Thursday show. That’s taken the national savings rate for the three months through September to 15.6%, the highest in two quarters.
While the increase in corporate savings is largely due to changes in seasonally adjusted operating surpluses and tax payments, it comes as rolling blackouts occurred for almost half of the time in the third quarter. That’s likely to further weigh on investment in an economy where reform-minded President Cyril Ramaphosa faces a challenge to his bid to lead the governing party for another five years, and as Eskom grapples with a leadership vacuum.
Private companies have been wary of committing large sums of money to domestic projects due to the nation’s electricity rationing, slow pace of reforms, high levels of crime, state graft and instability that last year culminated in the worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. South Africa is suffering an energy crisis as power utility Eskom, which produces almost all of the nation’s electricity, struggles to meet demand. Load shedding reached 1 054 hours, or 47.7% of the time in the third quarter, central bank data show. It’s now imposed outages for a record 189 days so far in 2022, according to Bloomberg calculations.
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