The Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index, created by the American Institute for Supply Management, rose from 52.6 points in November to 53.1 points in December.
Despite this improvement, the South African economy has been impacted by persistent power outages that negatively affect business activity, prompting the authorities to adopt what is known as load shedding, which involves removing power from a group of appliances or customers in order to avoid power saturation. This has contributed to the relief of the country’s economy, according to the official national statistics agency StatsSA.
This was announced in September last year by the Central Bank of South Africa, which said that by 2023, the economy should be improving.
Thus, against the backdrop of rising COVID-19 cases in China, the PMI warns that there is a probability of supply chain disruptions globally.