Modelling South African Gold Sales Using SARIMA, GARCH and Neural Networks

This study investigated the forecasting performance of the South African gold sales series using the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA), generalised autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (GARCH), general regression neural network (GRNN) and artificial neural network (ANN)-based extreme learning machine (ELM). This study employed traditional methods and a recently developed ML method for single hidden-layer feed-forward neural networks (SLFNs). The findings revealed that SARIMA 0,1,12,1,212 was considered the best model for the gold sales series. The empirical findings demonstrated that the SARIMA model outperforms neural network-based models, providing the South African government and its lenders with a more reliable and cost-effective tool for predicting foreign exchange earnings from gold. This study contributes to the literature by providing one of the first comparative evaluations of traditional time-series models and advanced neural network methods for forecasting South African gold sales. This study is novel as it is a first-of-its-kind comparative application of traditional SARIMA and GARCH models alongside GRNN and ANN-based ELM methods to South African gold sales, revealing the superior forecasting performance of a traditional SARIMA model over advanced ML approaches. Future research should explore the development and application of hybrid models that integrate the strengths of linear SARIMA frameworks with the pattern-recognition capabilities of nonlinear ANN-based ELM models.