South Africa’s energy crisis may have reduced the nation’s economic growth rate by as much as 3.2 percentage points last year.
- The country had 3,776 hours of load shedding in 2022, more than triple the amount in 2021.
- The outages surpassed the cumulative totals for 2019 and 2020 by mid-February 2023.
- The central bank’s models estimate that power cuts trimmed between 0.7 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points off the GDP growth rate in 2022.
- Potential growth was estimated at about 0.7% last year.
- Given that load shedding is expected to be worse in 2023, potential growth is forecasted at 0.0% in 2023.
- Major repairs, new capital investment and maintenance projects that could alleviate the pressure are only expected to be completed over the next 12 to 18 months.
- The risk of rolling blackouts is expected to remain high this year and into early 2024.