PRETORIA: South Africa’s economic outlook is not improving.In the June 2013 Monetary Policy Review (MPR) the South African Reserve Bank even suggests that it might have to revise its growth forecast of 2.4% for 2013 downwards at the next Monetary Policy Committee meeting at the end of July, following recent less-than-rosy data releases.The bank mentions that labour unrests have damaged confidence, investment and output.“A key risk to the inflation and growth outlook has been and continues to be the prospect of sharply rising unit labour costs arising out of combinations of overly-high wage settlements and/or falling output and productivity,” the MPR reads.“Wage, salary and price restraint at all levels, including executive pay, could underpin confidence and provide stability to prices, including that of the currency, in ways that boost economic growth,” the bank states.
