Arthur Kamp Archives - B2B Central

22 Feb 2023

Budget 2023: As good as could be hoped for

By Staff Writer

The National Treasury is mapping a path to fiscal sustainability and a lower government debt ratio in the long-term, says Arthur Kamp, Chief Economist at Sanlam Investments.

19 Mar 2020

COVID-19: What policymakers can and can’t do

By Janice Roberts

Pandemics like COVID-19 invoke behavioural responses amongst economic agents that cannot be changed by government stimulus packages. But, there is still a lot macroeconomic policymakers can do.

11 Mar 2020

Why is growth weakening?

By Janice Roberts

The year has barely commenced and GDP growth forecasts are being revised lower. Why is growth weakening?

24 Feb 2020

Budget 2020: SA’s choices amidst fiscal consolidation failure

By Janice Roberts

South Africa took a wrong turn at its fiscal crossroads a number of years ago, and the road taken has led us to chronic budget shortfalls and a growing debt burden.

15 Aug 2019

'SA's fiscal policy cannot be allowed to continue drifting in the wrong direction'

By Janice Roberts

By Arthur Kamp, Economist at Sanlam Investments South Africa’s current fiscal path is unsustainable. Taken at face value, the announced bail out of state-owned companies and continued weak income growth has, effectively, severely dimmed the hope of fiscal consolidation in 2019/20 and 2020/21 as a Main Budget deficit of close to 6% of GDP is...

24 Oct 2018

Medium Term Budget backs Ramaphosa’s stimulus plan

By Janice Roberts

By Arthur Kamp, economist at Sanlam Investments. Government’s 2018 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) provides clear links between the medium-term expenditure statement on the one hand and, on the other hand, President Ramaphosa’s five growth enhancing reforms, namely: reprioritisation of expenditure support for job creation establishment of an infrastructure fund addressing pressing problems in...

03 Oct 2018

Sifting the fleeting from the fundamentally important

By Janice Roberts

Essentially, when there is uncertainty in the market around the outcomes of economic policy it can cause a lot of volatility in asset prices. So, the key thing is to keep an eye on those long-term values. This is according to economist at Sanlam Investments, Arthur Kamp.

05 Sep 2018

As if a recession is not bad enough, low growth lies ahead

By Janice Roberts

By Arthur Kamp, economist at Sanlam Investments. Not only has South Africa entered a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP), future growth expectations are now likely to be revised down.

20 Feb 2018

Budget 2018: Beware of focusing on the symptoms

By Janice Roberts

By Sanlam Investments Economist, Arthur Kamp. Despite years of tax hikes and expenditure cuts, the Budget deficit remains wide and the government’s debt ratio continues to rise. Fiscal consolidation has not worked. Why?

23 Nov 2017

Facing SA’s fiscal failure

By Janice Roberts

By Arthur Kamp, economist at Sanlam Investments. Attention is firmly fixed on the coming round of sovereign debt rating decisions. Whatever the outcome of these reviews, it is clear that in the absence of reform, government’s fiscal position is unsustainable. Its revenue collection track record has been eroded and additional spending priorities and liquidity problems...

13 Sep 2017

Expect a rate cut next week

By Janice Roberts

By Arthur Kamp, Investment Economist at Sanlam Investments. The split-decision of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to cut its repo rate by 25bps to 6.75% in July 2017 appeared to signal a shift in focus away from the risks posed by potential rand weakness to the recorded downside surprises in real GDP and inflation...

20 Mar 2017

Sanguine US Fed waits on Republican fiscal policy decisions

By Janice Roberts

The US Federal Reserve’s decision on 15 March 2017 to increase the target range for the federal funds rate by 0.25% to 0.75-1.0% was widely anticipated.