Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula last night lifted the ban on interprovincial travel, and opened four more airports – in Mthatha, Hoedspruit, Phalaborwa and Margate.
Eighteen airports across the country are now operational.
Mini-buses and midi-buses are allowed to operate at only 70% capacity on long-distance (more than 200km) routes.
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank said its latest set of business cycle indicators – signalling changes to come in the economy – increased by 2.7%.
Fin24 reported that the bank said the ‘largest positive contributions to the movement in the composite leading business cycle indicator in June were increases in the number of residential building plans approved and in new passenger vehicles sold’.
The report said the ‘coincident indicator’ – which gives an early reading on the impact on GDP – for May declined by 0.8% on a month-on-month basis from April.
Fin24 quoted Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop as saying that May saw ‘the largest annual collapse in GDP on record’.
April’s revised coincident indicator was 30.7%, revised down from 26.8% compared to the previous year. May’s data also reflected a 31.3% decline from the previous year. These were the two largest declines on record, since the Reserve Bank began tracking this data in 1960, Bishop said.
The Reserve Bank said the decline in the coincident indicator for May was ‘mitigated somewhat’ by improvements in retail and new vehicle sales and industrial production, following the ‘gradual lifting of lockdown restrictions’.
It said: ‘The continued decrease in May, however, perpetuates the downward trend in the indicator and continues to show the severe impact of the extended lockdown on economic activity.’
In South Africa, positive cases grew yesterday by 1 567 to a cumulative total of 613 017 (with 520 381 recoveries). Deaths rose by 149 to 13 308.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (206 892), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (110 521), the Western Cape (104 781) and the Eastern Cape (85 311).