Household savings, financing and economic growth in South Africa

Itumeleng Pleasure Mongale, Tumelo Mashamaite and Kyiko Khoza

Business and Economic Horizons (BEH), 2018, vol. 14, issue 1

Abstract: The South African economy is characterised by low levels of household savings which play a very crucial role in stimulating sustained economic growth. At the same time consumers borrow in order to consume. The paper intends to investigate the impact of household savings and financing on economic growth in South Africa. The study is envisaged to assist monetary authorities and policy makers to mitigate this problem. An annual time series data covering the period from 1980 to 2014 is analysed by means of the Vector Error Correction Model approach. The Johansen Cointegration test results confirmed the existence of a long run relationship amongst variables under investigations. Moreover, the results suggest that financing, namely; credit extensions and leasing finance have positive relationships with the country’s economic growth while household savings indicate a negative relationship with growth. That being the case, the recommendation is that since it has been established by other studies that a rapid increase in credit is not commonly perceived to be one of the leading indicators of financial instability, policymakers are advised to consider imposing stringent credit control measures so that the demand for financing can be kept under control.

Keywords: Consumer/Household; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/285139/files/Mongale%201.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pdcbeh:285139

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.285139

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business and Economic Horizons (BEH) from Prague Development Center (PRADEC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().