South Africa’s economy rose by 3.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019, a growth rate much stronger than the forecast growth of 2.4 percent by economists, according to statistics released on Tuesday.
This quarter-on-quarter growth followed a contraction of 3.1 percent in the first quarter when frequent load shedding, weak investment levels, a gold mining strike and a weak grape harvest affected economic performance. quarter
The largest contributors to growth in the second quarter were mining, finance, trade and general government services, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said.
The mining industry increased by 14.4 percent during the second quarter while finance, real estate and business services industry grew by 4.1 percent.
However, construction was down 1.6 percent, while the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry contracted by 4.2 percent mainly because of a drop in the production of field crops and horticultural products.
The unexpected economic growth in the second quarter helped push the local currency of rand to its best level in more than two weeks.
By early afternoon Tuesday, the rand was trading at R15.13 against the dollar, almost one percent stronger than on Monday.
