economist Dawie Roodt | Radio 94.7 FM

According to the figures released by Statistics SA the number of liquidations increased by 24.9% in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period for last year.

The estimated number of insolvencies increased by 4.6% in May and a 15.2% increase was estimated in the first five months of this year.

Economist Mike Schussler said: “We are in trouble. A lot of firms are in trouble and South Africa is getting poorer. I think we are in a space where its not going to get easy getting the economy going.”

Schussler said the companies have felt a pinch where there has been little to no growth,

“There is no demand any more for certain industries and when there is no demand its difficult to match prices compared to other companies. We are not on our last leg just yet but we are in a very vulnerable position,” he said.

The StatsSA figures showed that the three worst-hit industries were agriculture with nine business closin
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Statistics South Africa announces that unemployment rose by 0.5 percentage points to 27.6% in the first quarter of this year. The figures confirm economists’ presumption that economic growth in the first quarter was negative and unemployment remains one of SA’s biggest challenges.

The SA economy started on a bitter note this year with unemployment rising to 27.6% after being 27.1% in the fourth quarter of 2018. The number of people employed is significantly less than a year ago and declined by 86,000 people to less than 16.3 million people.

By contrast, the number of unemployed increased by 3.7% to 6.3 million and the number of discouraged job seekers by 7.5% to nearly 3 million. This means that nearly 9.2 million South Africans of working age are not in school, do not study further and are not voluntarily unemployed. The figures come from Statistics SA’s quarterly employment survey (QLFS) for the first quarter of 2019, but growth fig
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