觀點詳情

South Africa’s outlook for 2024 remains bleak, with continued power outages, limited upside from a China property sector recovery, and the August Presidential election set to weigh on growth. We see the result of the upcoming Presidential election as more uncertain than in previous votes, with early polls predicting President Ramaphosa to fall short of a majority. This increases the risk that the African National Congress will be forced to work with smaller parties to govern effectively, potentially limiting progress on necessary reforms. South Africa’s equity index has a lot of exposure to the materials sector, so it could be well positioned to benefit from a potential commodity price rally associated with any rebound in the Chinese property sector. Although we recognize increased stimulus could help the property sector as well as spark some infrastructure growth, we don’t expect to see the industry returning to its previous levels of growth. We also don’t anticipate loadshedding to be solved in 2024, and the lack of consistent power will probably continue to cap domestic growth. However, we do see room for the situation to improve as private sector power generation capacity increases. On the positive side, the consumer may benefit from decreasing inflation, potentially leading to interest rate cuts and subsequent acceleration in credit growth. We think tourism still has room to catch up , with international arrivals by air still at ~80% of 2019 levels.30 Overall, we remain cautious on the South African market in 2024.