President Cyril Ramaphosa has reiterated that implementation will be key to the country’s economic recovery plan but has given no indication of when the final plan will be made public.
In his closing remarks to the ANC national executive committee lekgotla, which focused primarily on economic recovery, Ramaphosa said the many policies and plans to grow the economy needed to be underpinned by an “urgent need to implement what we are planning”.
He said this could only happen if all sections of society played their role in implementation and monitoring.
The recovery plan, the broad framework of which came out of interactions at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac), has been in the making for more than two months in an effort to create jobs and boost an economy that was in recession even before the Covid-19 outbreak.
The plan is now likely to be tabled at the cabinet lekgotla expected to start on Wednesday, and could be announced after this and before finance minister Tito Mboweni delivers the medium-term budget policy statement later in October.
This comes as SA is in a more than six-month lockdown, which has gradually eased but has had a devastating effect on the country’s already weak economy, which lost more than 2-million jobs in the second quarter, according to a Stats SA report released last week.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has downgraded SA’s performance for 2020, predicting a 11.5% collapse in GDP.
Ramaphosa on Monday said the lekgotla affirmed that SA’s recovery plan would be an infrastructure-led strategy, with investments in energy; water and sanitation; public transport, roads and bridges; human settlements, health and education; digital infrastructure and public transport.
Employment
The programme will focus on local employment and will recognise the role that small, medium and micro enterprises and co-operatives can play in creating work, particularly for youth and those who are entering into the labour market for the first time across all economic sectors.
“To achieve significant job creation multipliers, the emphasis will be on localisation, including maximising the use of SA materials and construction companies as well as labour-intensive methods,” the president said.
The ANC will “guide the work of government, working with the social partners to generate higher rates of economic growth, investment and job creation”.
He said an imperative for sustained reconstruction and recovery was bringing SA’s rising national debt under control and stabilising its public finances.
The budget deficit must be reduced, borrowing costs must be managed and there must be pro-growth reforms, such as large-scale off-budget investment in the energy sector and a continuation of pro-investment reforms in a range of productive sectors including telecommunications, mining, agriculture, manufacturing and tourism.
State capacity must be strengthened to accelerate infrastructure investments; and project management skills are required in the public sector to improve project specification and design, Ramaphosa said.
“All this will happen if we focus our attention on implementation, implementation and implementation.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.