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Friday, January 9, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon O'Donnell.

Making headlines today:

On Thursday, economists said that the economic outlook for South Africa for the first half of the year was "bleak", with economic growth coming very close to a recession, if the country didn't actually slip into a recession.

Fanie Joubert, an economist at the Efficient Group, said he expected the average economic growth for 2009 to be between 0,5% and 1%.

A recession occurs when a country's gross domestic product shows negative growth for two consecutive quarters.

Chris Hart, an economist at Investment Solutions South Africa, agrees that South Africa would come close to entering a recession or would go into recession, with GDP growth for the first two quarters expected to be zero or low.

He expected South Africa's GDP to grow by between 1% and 1,5% for the year as a whole.

Nevertheless, both economists expected the country's GDP to start improving in the second half of the year.

On Thursday, four tankers were involved in a fire at petrochemicals giant Sasol's solvent manufacturing facility, in Germiston.

Sasol group communications manager Jaqui O'Sullivan said that while the cause of the fire was not yet known, investigations so far had determined that there was no evidence of an actual chemical explosion.

The extent of the damage was yet to be assessed. The plant was shut while investigations took place. Sasol assured all concerned that customers would continue to be supplied with product from the company's Durban facility.

Also making headlines:

Mazda will cut its catalyst precious metal use in its Mazda3 compact car.
Tractor sales rose 68% in December on good crops and lower prices.
Research and development boosts the technological developments in flexible electronics.
And, telecommunications giant MTN gets the green light to merge with Verizon SA.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit engineeringnews.co.za.