It had been hoped that South Africa would turn the corner and achieve growth of more than 1% this year.

However, as the year progressed, the Reserve Bank lowered its expectations, finally settling on 0.5%.

A shock decline in GDP in the first quarter of 3.2% seemed to have set the tone for most of the year.

Duma Gqubule of the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation said that next year did not look much better.

"All forecasts that I've seen from National Treasury, from the IMF and from the eight different banking companies say that we will have a sixth consecutive year of declining GDP per capita."

FNB economist Siphamandla Mkhwanazi agreed.

"We've had to revise down our expectations for 2020 given what is happening at the moment with the fiscal cliff that the country finds itself in."

There was agreement that load shedding had put the brakes on any real improvement in growth, with concern that unless Eskom changed its situation next year would be the same.

EWN