Key View

• Total’s recent discovery of gas condensates de-risks South Africa’s deep-water offshore exploration.
• Our long-term outlook for South African oil and gas exploration and production is brightened, as more interest and investments target the area.
• Despite exploratory progress, South Africa’s upstream potential will be hindered by its

Key View

• ​​We do not forecast South Africa’s economy to fully recover from the Covid-19 pandemic over our medium-term forecast period (2020-2024). We note that household disposable incomes will feel the pressure as a consequence of a slowly recovering economy, with no real wage gains forecast over 2020-2024, making consumers more price

Key View

• Grocery delivery services are fast becoming a mainstream offering in South Africa, with a significant rise in first-time users of online services in 2020.

• While grocery delivery services were available in the country pre-Covid-19, the pandemic and related restrictions are accelerating e-commerce trends, and we believe that food

Key View

• South Africa continues to work towards introducing the new National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill.
• South Africa’s health expenditure remains the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• GDP growth will continue to face challenges, risking delays to NHI country-wide roll-out.

South Africa continues to work towards introducing the new National

Key View: Shoprite's 2020 financial results indicate that the retailer continues to generate revenue growth, despite external factors, such as Covid-19 related restrictions and currency devaluations weighing on its operations. The retailers continue to gain market share in its core South Africa market, through its competitive pricing model and

Key View

• A lack of progress on the State of the Nation Address 2020 goals and the seemingly contradicting actions by the government will erode investor sentiment for the South African power sector.
• With delays in the approval of regulations allowing municipalities to purchase power from independent power producers (IPPs) and firms to self

Key View

• Covid-19-related restriction measures have seen South African retail sales contract for a third consecutive month in June 2020.
• Several demand-side risks are evident in the market, impacting South African consumer spending over the remainder of 2020.
• We highlight two key trends that are currently playing out for South African

Key View: We at Fitch Solutions have made a further downward revision to our 2020 alcoholic drinks consumption forecast for South Africa. Our forecast for alcoholic drinks consumption now drops to a contraction of -5.4% y-o-y for 2020, from a pre-Covid-19 forecast of 0.7% growth y-o-y. Initially, in March 2020, we made a downward revision to 0.5%

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions expect South Africa’s consolidated fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP to widen sharply from an estimated 6.8% in the 2019/20 fiscal year (FY) to 16.0% in FY20/21.
• Revenue collection will remain constrained by a sharp slowdown in GDP growth and the offering of some tax-relief measures, while expenditure will