There is no common and coherent view in the government’s three major economic policies, the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) said on Tuesday (5 November).<\/p>\n
“It’s really important that we see more policy coherence,” CDE executive director Ann Bernstein said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The economy is in trouble and South Africa needs certainty. It’s time to make the tough choices and stick to them.”<\/p>\n
Bernstein was referring to the National Development Plan (NDP), the economic development department’s New Growth Path (NGP), and the trade and industry department’s industrial policy action plan (IPAP).<\/p>\n
She said a report titled “Policy Gridlock?”, released by the CDE, noted that the three documents offered contrasting accounts of the constraints South Africa faced.<\/p>\n
IPAP and the NGP characterised the economy as being “consumption-led”, which suggested that the key problem lay with the financial sector, which was starving the productive sector of investment funds.<\/p>\n
The NDP said nothing about this, Bernstein said.<\/p>\n
“More important, the three documents have very different ideas about where the jobs will come from.<\/p>\n
“IPAP and the NGP talk about jobs in the ‘productive sectors’ [including] manufacturing, infrastructure, agriculture, and so on, while the NDP expects most new jobs to be in small services firms serving the domestic market,” she said.<\/p>\n
University of Cape Town economics Professor David Kaplan, who wrote the report, said that according to the IPAP and the NGP a weak rand would be fundamental to the success of their strategies.<\/p>\n
However, the NDP said it would not stimulate growth and employment creation, as the economy was not geared to take advantage of a cheaper rand.<\/p>\n
In the report Kaplan said the IPAP promised over 2.4 million jobs by 2020, the NGP promised five million, and the NDP 5.9m jobs by 2020 and a further five million by 2030.<\/p>\n
Kaplan said the employment numbers were unsubstantiated.<\/p>\n
“The NGP talks about substantial growth in employment in mining, manufacturing and agriculture, but all of these sectors have been shedding jobs for years.<\/p>\n
“The NGP provides no data or calculations that would suggest why these persistent trends should suddenly be reversed.”<\/p>\n
Bernstein said it was not clear which approach the government had chosen from the three documents.<\/p>\n
“It’s no wonder more and more business leaders are speaking out,” she said.<\/p>\n
South African economy shows slow recovery<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n