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The BER has developed a method to provisionally identify and date the latest turning point of the business cycle with a lag of only two quarters. The objective is not to replace the SA Reserve Bank's (SARB) official chronology. Among the methods considered, the five-quarter centred weighted moving average (5qcwma) of the BER’s BCI provides the closest approximation to the Bank's historical business-cycle dates, recording the highest correlation and the greatest percentage overlap. Beyond its empirical performance, the method is also relatively simple, transparent, straightforward to replicate and update, and less susceptible to endpoint revisions than the HP-filter-based alternatives. Adopting this approach enables the BER to provisionally identify the most recent turning point (or, at most, the two most recent turning points) with a lag of only two quarters, while recognising that the Bank's official chronology remains the definitive historical record of SA's business cycle.
