Ramaphosa’s ministers sign ‘performance contracts’ – promising to create jobs and stop wasteful spending
As announced in his state of the nation address on 13 February, president Cyril Ramaphosa has signed performance agreements with all of his cabinet ministers.
“These contracts aim to strengthen the capacity of the state and increase accountability, the presidency said in a statement on Tuesday (8 December).
“These agreements – which are based on the targets contained in the Medium-Term Strategic Framework – will be made public so that the people of South Africa can hold those who they elected into office to account.”
The contracts largely follow the same formula and coalesce to meet a series of larger performance targets that the government is aiming for.
Some of the main targets include:
- Reducing unemployment to 20 – 24% with two million new jobs created, especially for youth;
- Drive a transformed, representative and inclusive economy which prioritises women, youth and persons with disabilities;
- Push for investment to reach 23% of GDP by 2024 with the public sector contributing 8% of GDP and the private sector contributing 15% 0f GDP;
- Get the National Health Insurance (NHI) to achieve universal coverage for 90% of South Africans by 2030;
- Assist more students to achieve a National Senior Certificate pass in subjects by 2024;
- Eliminating fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
You can find the full list of performance agreements for each minister here.
The list of targets for each minister are quite in-depth and relate directly to their portfolios. However, they do not present much in the way for consequences or accountability when failing to meet them.
Performance will be regularly reviewed by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), through which a score card on the targets will be drawn up and presented to the president.
In instances where performance is sub-optimal, the president will ‘meet with the minister to discuss areas of improvement’. These will be incorporated on the scorecard for the next performance review.
The president may take ‘any action he deems necessary’ in cases of persistent non-performance.
Read: The shocking state of maths and science education in South Africa
Loading ...