While South Africa's first quarter GDP print of -6.4 percent annualised was an unpleasant surprise, it is actually quite positive when compared to the double-digit negative rates being seen in many OECD countries, head of economic statistics at Statistics South Africa, Rashad Cassim, told I-Net Bridge on Tuesday.

Cassim pointed out that Japan was delivering negative quarterly figures in the region of -15 percent.

"Many OECD countries are in double-digit negative territory," he said.

He said that when the SA numbers were decomposed, it was not surprising to see a negative number of over six percent.

"The financial sector is beginning to see a decline and it is the first time tertiary as a whole has moved negative. It is still good, but it moved into negative growth and this brought GDP down dramatically," he explained.

Today's data showed the tertiary sector down -0.5 percent after a positive 2.4 percent before.

Cassim did not want to make projections about the future of GDP and the length of the recession, but he said that interest rates may start having a positive effect.

"But at this stage it is difficult to say," he said.

He advised people to look at the next set of numbers that would inform the upcoming GDP.

Head of GDP at Stats SA, Joe de Beer, suggested that one of the reasons the market had expected a slightly better figure (-3.9 percent) was because about a third of the economic industries were not covered from the monthly statistics.

"So an analyst could be quite in the dark on the services side," he said.

De Beer said that the "services" sector made up around 60 percent of overall data.

Cassim also said that using annualised numbers can sometimes be a "double-edged sword" as on a non-annualised basis, negative growth was not as high at -1.3 percent.

I-Net Bridge

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