The construction sector benefits from strong fundamentals but has grappled recently with a slowdown in big-ticket infrastructure work and falling margins, prompting some firms to focus their efforts outside of their home turf. However, this has helped to stoke growth in smaller and newly established contractors. While significant infrastructure spending has been planned for the medium term,...
South Africa is home to the farthest-reaching and highest-quality transport network on the African continent. For decades the country’s extensive road, air, rail and sea links have underpinned economic and social development not only in the domestic market but through the region as a whole. In recent years the government has made a concerted effort to shore up South Africa’s infrastructure and...
The government has pledged to increase exploration for gas in the National Development Plan and promulgated a 20-year Integrated Resource Plan to diversify the energy mix by boosting nuclear, natural gas and renewable power generation capacities. With an estimated 3.5% of global coal reserves, South Africa has traditionally benefitted from an ample supply of cheap fuel. It has the fifth-most...
South Africa’s mining industry is the fifth largest in the world and the country has around 80% of global platinum reserves, 11% of gold reserves, and some of the largest supplies of chrome ore and manganese. The sector’s contribution to GDP has, however, been on a steady decline, falling to just under 5% in 2013 from 11% two decades earlier. Reversing this trend is a top government priority,...
Across the African continent, South Africa accounts for 80% of all insurance premiums. The market is heavily tilted towards life products, which make up four-fifths of the industry’s premiums, with earnings in the segment 10 times that of non-life in 2013. At year-end 2013, South Africa’s life insurance industry had $189.4bn in assets under management, with the segment’s top five firms showing...
The trillion-dollar market capitalisation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) makes the country’s bourse the 19th-largest exchange worldwide. South Africa has one of the highest equity capitalisation-to-GDP ratios globally, a unique phenomenon by international standards. The country’s capital markets have performed exceedingly well in recent years, in contrast to broader macroeconomic...
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