South Africa hopes to include dagga sales and prostitution in the hopes that they can then label the economy as growing

SHOOT: This is the perfect story to illustrate to what extent lying to ourselves has become absolutely normal. The reality is that the economy is contracting. How do we know? Simply, jobs are being shed, not added. Energy prices are at the heart of this, and will continue to erode growth, and speed up contraction. So snap out of this 'recovery' bullshit.

Earlier this month SSA announced that the base year for the calculation of GDP will be changed from 2000 to 2005.

Much of the hidden economy - like prostitution and cannabis farming - will now also be included in the GDP number.

clipped from www.fin24.com Johannesburg - Growth or contraction? This is a question giving rise to almost as many opinions as there are economists. Ecoquant economist Christo Luüs, the winner of FinMedia24's 2008 Economist of the Year competition, reckons the economy is shrinking. The consultancy's forecast is that GDP will pull back 0.3% in the third quarter, based on the expectation that the economy will retreat 2.2% for the year as a whole. NKC economist Christie Viljoen also expects a further small decline for the third quarter. He says that sectors like mining and retail are still doing poorly. Seventeen Reuters economists' consensus is that the economy will emerge from the recession in the third quarter and grow 0.2%. Standard Bank economists Danelee van Dyk and Shireen Darmalingam are a lot more positive. They expect economic growth of 1.9% in the third quarter, thanks to growth on a quarterly basis both in the manufacturing sector and in electricity consumption.