A bleak future for South Africa’s metals mining sector

Precious metals mining in South Africa is in long-term decline and lower prices are undermining profitability. Although the country’s near-monopoly on global platinum and palladium reserves suggests that output will be maintained, supply disruption at South Africa’s mines is one reason why we think the prices of these metals will rise in 2015-16. And more generally, we think that weakness in the mining sector will act as a constraint on South Africa’s wider economic growth.