South Africa Market Review - Q1 2017

South Africa’s economy faced a challenging year in 2016, as soft commodity prices, slow domestic demand and an uncertain political outlook reduced growth. Late November, at its monetary policy committee meeting for the year, the South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) held its repo rate at 7%, while the prime lending rate, as charged by banks, was kept at 10.5%. The first quarter of 2017 could not keep up with the explosive end of 2016, when structured product sales, at ZAR2.9bn, made up more than 50