Gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced in the economy, jumped 6.4% for the first three months of the year on an annualized basis. Outside of the reopening-fueled third-quarter surge last year, it was the best period for GDP since the third quarter of 2003.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 6.5% increase. Q4 of 2020 accelerated at a 4.3% pace. This signals the economy is off and running and it will be a boom-like year, said Mark Zandi chief economist at Moody s Analytics. Obviously, the American consumer is powering the train and businesses are investing strongly.
Public sector strike – what happens next
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Public sector unions have told their members to start preparing for industrial action, following a breakdown in wage negotiations with the government – however, much still needs to be done before workers can head to the streets.
This will leave South Africa facing an incredibly long and drawn-out period of strike threats and uncertainty, say economists from the Bureau of Economic Research (BER).
Government has been facing an uphill battle against unions over wage hikes after budgetary constraints forced it to renege on a 2018 wage agreement, which saw public sector wages frozen in 2020.
National Treasury has also vowed to cut the public sector wage bill by R160 billion over the next three financial years.
AfricaSouth Africa s rand edges higher in thin trade
Reuters
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South Africa s rand edged higher early on Monday in thin trade ahead of a national holiday, with traders unlikely to take many big bets ahead of some key data due later in the week.
At 0630 GMT, the rand was 0.12% firmer at 14.2700 per dollar, not far-off its close at 14.2875 on Friday in New York.
The rand has made solid gains in April, outperforming its emerging market peers, with gains of around 3% year-to-date against the U.S. dollar, as higher commodity prices cushioned demand for the currency against rising U.S. Treasury yields.
George Boardman | Columnist
Sen. Mitch McConnell had a valid point when he recently berated some the nation’s largest corporations for their opposition to the Republican-backed changes in Georgia’s voting laws.
McConnell accused the companies of “dabbling in behavior like a woke parallel government” and said that they “will invite serious consequences if they become vehicles for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
The GOP leader in the Senate didn’t say so directly, but he implied some of America’s wealthiest corporations and individuals lacked gratitude for the yeoman work Republicans and the Trump administration did to lower their taxes and clear regulatory hurdles that hindered their ability to maximize profits.
Opinion: Rolling out the vaccine was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, but new obstacles keep emerging and we should anticipate that more will come.