Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Thursday he believed the economy’s rebound from recession could last.

It comes after GDP figures, released earlier this week, showed the economy had grown slightly in the third quarter of this year after a period of shrinkage.

Gordhan was full of festive cheer when it came to this week’s GDP figures.

“It is an early Christmas present for you and we are anticipating from the tertiary point of view which we will review a 1.5 percent growth next year,” he said.

“It is sustainable, however, I think economies and finance ministers around the world and central bank governors are very concerned about how we manage that sustainability.”

He warned South Africans needed to start doing things differently to recover fully from the recession.