Let me quote you a paragraph from last week’s Economist magazine: “It was great while it lasted. In a golden period from 2003 to 2010 …. economies grew at an annual average rate of close to 5%, wages rose and unemployment fell, … people were lifted out of poverty and the middle class swelled…. But now the growth spurt is over.
What some worried would be a ‘new normal’ of expansion of 3% a year is turning out to be far worse. The …economy will on average grow by only around 1.3% this year.”3 No, in this case the Economist is not referring to South Africa – the quote is actually for the Latin American region. But it is very much also our own story.