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BusinessLive reports that Business for SA (B4SA) estimates that between one-million and four-million jobs in the formal and informal sectors could be lost due to the Covid-19 crisis and that economic activity will again reach pre-lockdown levels only in three to five years’ time.
Economic modelling also shows that GDP could shrink between 10% and 17% in 2020, depending on the length and severity of the lockdown. The group, which brings together Business Unity SA (Busa) and the Black Business Council, has urged the government to move as quickly as possible through the various stages of the lockdown, putting in place a “risk-adjusted” approach that will enable most of the economy to reopen. On Wednesday, Busa vice-president Martin Kingston described the economic outlook as one of a depression because “the recession is going to be much deeper and will endure for much longer than we thought”. B4SA anticipates that the epidemic will peak in late August and September and that over the next weeks and months, infections and mortalities will rise enormously. However, both “lives and livelihoods” needed to be preserved, it argued, which required reopening the economy with workplace safety protocols and personal protective equipment in place, a ban on social gatherings and the provision of safe public transport for employees.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Carol Paton at BusinessLive
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