The impact of COVID-19 on economic statistics released by the South African Reserve Bank
The Economic Statistics Department of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has always met its statistical commitments regarding original release schedules, in accordance with the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the compilation of certain economic statistics due to the difficulties experienced in the collection of data from respondents.
The macroeconomic statistics, published by the SARB in the Quarterly Bulletin, are compiled by integrating statistics released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). On 17 April 2020, Stats SA announced that gross domestic product (GDP) statistics for the first quarter of 2020 would be released on 30 June 2020 instead of the original release date of 2 June 2020. Given the importance of the GDP and other Stats SA statistics in the compilation of statistics published by the SARB, the June 2020 Quarterly Bulletin will now be released on 16 July 2020.
These delays will impact on two other statistical releases from the SARB. The release of the current account of the balance of payments (BOP), which follows that of the GDP by two working days, has changed from 4 June 2020 to 2 July 2020. The external debt and international investment position statistics originally scheduled for 31 March 2020 will now be released on 16 July 2020 to coincide with the release of the June 2020 Quarterly Bulletin, as these statistics are dependent on the BOP statistics.
A summary of the changes in release dates is available at the following link:
https://www.resbank.co.za/SARBEvents/AdvanceReleaseCalendar/Pages/default.aspx
Issued by SARB Media Relations
Author: Derrick Markotter
RCCI Webmaster Derrick runs a boutique web marketing agency, IdealMedia Marketing.