PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa’s economy returned to modest growth in the fourth quarter of last year after a small contraction in the previous quarter, statistics agency data showed on Tuesday.
But the 0.6% expansion in seasonally-adjusted, quarter-on-quarter terms was slower than the 0.9% predicted by economists, as only three of the 10 industries tracked by Statistics South Africa grew.
The biggest contributor to fourth-quarter growth came from agriculture, which expanded 17.2%.
Fourth-quarter gross domestic product grew 0.9% on a year-on-year basis, while for 2024 as a whole the economy grew 0.6%.
The statistics agency revised down its estimate of the third-quarter contraction to 0.1%.
(Reporting by Kopano Gumbi; Additional reporting by Tannur Anders and Sfundo Parakozov; Editing by Alexander Winning)
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