South Africa must take uncomfortable risks to accelerate economic growth and achieve fiscal sustainability, Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSouth Africans love to gamble, but when it comes to growth, it turns out we are risk-shy,\u201d Kganyago told a public lecture at the University of South Africa in the capital, Pretoria, on Tuesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe would be much better off if we could stop betting on sports and start betting on growth instead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more than a decade, South Africa has grown at less than 1% a year on average, hamstrung by graft, crime and snarls in sectors including energy, water and logistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fundamental question we need to ask ourselves, as a country, is: do we truly want to grow? It seems the answer is obvious, but it is not,\u201d Kganyago said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need \u2018growth with adjectives\u2019, where growth is only worth doing if it\u2019s the right kind of growth. Just go for growth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While efforts to implement reforms, spearheaded by Operation Vulindlela, a unit within President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s office, have begun to bear fruit, progress has been slow, Kganyago cautioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the reasons has been the consequences of institutional destruction during the years of former President Jacob Zuma\u2019s rule \u2014 a process often called \u201cstate capture\u201d to describe what happens when institutions are corruptly run for private gain rather than public benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt devastated capacity in national government; it just about broke the state-owned enterprises; and it persists in the municipal failures we see around us today,\u201d Kganyago said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To break from stagnant growth, South Africa needs \u201cto accept that growth means trying things that are risky,\u201d the governor said. \u201cThis is not always comfortable, especially for people who already have power and wealth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reserve Bank Chairman Lesetja Kganyago said that uncomfortable risks are necessary for South Africa to grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":816111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: The image format is not supported.","_sma_x_post_id":"2084925134129820017","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2167287424091657","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[8927,4043,20881],"class_list":["post-868873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-lesetja-kganyago","tag-south-african-reserve-bank","tag-university-of-south-africa-unisa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868873"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868897,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868873\/revisions\/868897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}