Absa PMI

Business Confidence Index
Consumer Confidence Index
Purchasing Managers' Index
Building Confidence Index
Civil Confidence Index

Absa PMI

The Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI™) compiled by the BER and sponsored by Absa, is based on the widely used and highly regarded PMI produced by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) in the USA.

The headline PMI is calculated as the weighted average of the following indices (weights in parentheses): Business Activity (0.20), New Orders (0.20), Employment (0.20), Supplier Deliveries (0.20) and Inventories (0.20). Note that the inverse of the Supplier Deliveries index is used in the PMI calculation .The survey from which the indices are compiled require the respondents to indicate each month, whether a particular activity (e.g. production) for their company has increased, decreased or remained unchanged.

The indices are then calculated by taking the percentage of respondents that reported an increase and adding it to one-half of the percentage that reported no change. This results in an index for which a value of 50 indicates no change in the activity, a value above 50 indicates increased activity and a value below 50 indicates decreased activity.

Download this file for more details of the South African manufacturing PMI as well as definitions to use with the interpretation of the survey questionnaire (updated November 2020).

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Absa PMI, April 2026

Date Uploaded: May 04 2026 11:00


The seasonally adjusted Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose above the neutral 50-point mark for the first time since September 2025, increasing to 52.6 in April from 49 in March. The improvement was driven by a rebound in both business activity and new sales orders, pointing to a stronger start to the second quarter following a weak first quarter. However, some of this improvement likely reflects front-loading of demand ahead of expected price increases, raising questions about the sustainability of the recovery