Gordhan told an SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry event in Johannesburg that, although he expects Brexit to have an impact on the global economy and South Africa, government was putting plans in place to weather the storm.

"We are living in very turbulent, volatile, and uncertain global times. Brexit and all the uncertainty it creates economically, both in Europe and elsewhere in the world... will only play itself out in the next year or so as we begin to understand how the negotiation process between the EU and the UK begins to unfold," he said.

Gordhan said government, business and labour needed to ask tough questions to ensure the country builds on its own strengths.

"In the current global environment, we don’t have a very encouraging and supporting context. The message we, as government, have been giving and exchanging with our partners in business, is that we as SA need to build on our own strengths, understand where our own competitive advantages are and [do] some hard work which will take our growth numbers above what the International Monitory Fund predicts we will produce in 2016 at 0.1% growth."

Gordhan said this could be done by leveraging on strong institutions and the well-developed capital markets which had kept our international borrowing at 10%.

"Much of our borrowing is done internally. We have set a limit of 10% in terms of foreign borrowing. This is where there has been a great deal of foresight by Treasury."

He added that volatility in the financial markets, where every bit of news moves the markets in one way or the other, had also put a strain on the country's markets.

"We see that lower commodity prices and a lower demand in commodity prices has impacted a number of economies in developing countries. The room in most economies for fiscal and monitory stimuli is fairly narrow and that applies in our country as well," he said.

He said one of the government's major challenges going forward was its long-term investment in infrastructure development.

Britain voted to leave the European Union on June 24. The rand then plunged far more than the day President Jacob Zuma fired former finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene.

- News24.com