South Africa Retail Sales Rise at Slowest Since February 2017

(Bloomberg) -- Retail sales in South Africa, the continent’s most-industrialized economy, rose at the slowest pace in 15 months in April.

Sales climbed 0.5 percent from a year earlier, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said in a statement on its website Wednesday. That’s less than the revised 4.6 percent expansion for March and compares with a median estimate of 4.4 percent in a Bloomberg survey.

Gross domestic product hasn’t grown at more than 2 percent a year since 2013 and is struggling to gain momentum despite political changes earlier this year that bolstered investor confidence. South Africa’s economy shrank the most in almost a decade in the first quarter as Jacob Zuma handed the reins of power to Cyril Ramaphosa, racking up the worst performance of the former president’s tenure.

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