South Africa’s volume of mining production decreased by 9.1pc in July 2020 against the same month a year ago, according to Statistics South Africa. Mining increased by 20.2pc in July 2020 compared to June in seasonally adjusted terms. The increase was after a decline of 1.9pc in June 2020 and a rebound of 50.5pc in May after the deep decline of 37.8pc in April and a decline of 18.9pc in March as COVID-19 policies slowed down mining production.
The report produces a seasonally adjusted mining index for the last three months. The total mineral index increased to 78.2 in May-Jul, up 3.7pc from Feb-Apr. Within the index, important metals include iron ore with a weight of 10.98, manganese ore at 4.2, other metallic minerals at 2.09, copper with a weight of 0.93, and other non-metallic minerals at 5.89.
The seasonally adjusted iron ore index was 57.8 in May-Jul 2020, up 7.4pc from the Feb-Apr index. Manganese ore encountered an index of 144.6 in May-Jul 2020, up 34.9pc compared to the previous three-month period while the other non-metallic minerals category decreased the index by 5.2pc to 64.0.