Fourth quarter GDP up by 3.8%

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Pretoria – Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) has announced that the seasonally adjusted real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at market prices for the fourth quarter of 2013 increased at an annualised rate of 3.8 percent.

It said in a statement on Tuesday that the first preliminary annual estimates of GDP for 2013 were derived as the sum of the GDP for the four quarters - estimates indicate that the real annual GDP at market prices for 2013 increased by 1.9 percent.

“The nominal GDP at market prices in 2013 was R3.4 trillion, which is R246 billion more than in 2012,” said StatsSA.

The most notable performances were finance, real estate and business services that expanded by R54 billion to R652 billion and general government services that expanded by R52 billion to R518 billion.

Regarding the fourth quarter figures, the main contributors to the increase in economic activity were the manufacturing industry (1.8 percentage points) and the mining and quarrying industry (0.8 of a percentage point).

The unadjusted real GDP at market prices for the fourth quarter of 2013 increased by 2.0 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2012.

The most notable performances were the mining and quarrying industry that increased by 9.4 percent and the construction industry that increased by 4.5 percent. – SAnews.gov.za