Reserve Bank delays data releases due to Covid-19
The consequences of the Covid-19 crisis, which has affected data collection from important state agencies such as Statistics SA, is now also spilling over to the SA Reserve Bank.
In a statement released on Monday, the central bank said that the release of publications from its economic statistics department, including the release of its quarterly bulletin, would be delayed.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had an effect on the compilation of certain economic statistics due to the difficulties experienced in the collection of data from respondents,” the Bank said.
The macroeconomic statistics, published by the Bank in the Quarterly Bulletin, are compiled by integrating statistics released by Stats SA, the bank said.
Due to the pandemic and the economic lockdown, Stats SA has been battling to collect data, delaying a host of statistical publications on everything from consumer inflation to mining and manufacturing data.
On April 17, Stats SA announced that GDP statistics for the first quarter of 2020 would be released on June 30 instead of the original release date of June 2.
“Given the importance of the GDP and other Stats SA statistics in the compilation of statistics published by the SA Reserve Bank, the June 2020 Quarterly Bulletin will now be released on July 16,” the Bank said.
The quarterly bulletin provides comprehensive coverage of financial markets, national accounts, and economic and government finance data.
Other statistical releases from the Bank will also be affected — including the release of the current account of the balance of payments, which follows that of the GDP by two working days, and has now been changed from June 4 to July 2, the Bank said.
The release of external debt and international investment position statistics — which are dependent on the balance of payments statistics — will now be delayed to July 16 to coincide with the release of the quarterly bulletin, according to the Bank.
The delays are likely to contribute to the difficulty organisations and private-sector economists are having in trying to understand the effect the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown are having on the economy. The Bank expects the economy to shrink 7% in 2020 — but forecasts for the contraction in growth range from anywhere between 5.4% and 16.7%.
Speaking after last week’s meeting of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago underscored the difficulty of forecasting economic variables in the current climate.
“These are uncertain times and these uncertain times are actually making economic forecasting very, very tricky,” he said
The announcement follows comments from Kganyago on Sunday night that monetary policy measures taken by the Bank in recent months have not filtered through to the real economy yet, Bloomberg reported.
The bank has cut the benchmark repo rates to 3.75% — its lowest level since it was introduced in 1998
“We could say that it stimulates demand and then because it stimulates demand more goods are produced and so forth, but if you are providing this and the economy is locked down, you don’t see the effect of it,” he said.
The Bank has also relaxed accounting and capital rules for the banking sector in a bid to free up money for additional lending, as well as more than doubling its holdings of South Africa government debt, helping to reduce borrowing costs in the domestic bond market.