by Tito Mboweni who will become the seventh Finance Minister in the last five years. The first nine months of President Ramaphosa were not exactly the honeymoon that had been expected and the resignation of Nene over corruption allegations is just one more proof that the bottlenecks inhibiting the growth potential will be hard to overcome. However, it seems that some of the additional burden that was put on growth in H1 is set to end. The business confidence index recovered from the low experienced in August (90 points) to 93 in September. Strikes in the mining sector as well as in key public enterprises (such as Eskom) were the result of a confrontational wage bargaining process. Since the unions have agreed on new wage deals, output should now recover somewhat. However, it should be just enough to meet our 2018 growth forecast (+0.7%). China: Stimulus tap open China revealed a new set of policies to boost growth. The Central Bank announced a reduction of 100bp.
