The plans announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa to stimulate economic growth in South Africa seem like nothing more than lip service to the voters and investors who are concerned and displeased with the fact that the country's economy is going from bad to worse.
As long as the ANC government continues to drive away investors with policies like expropriation without compensation and as long as the public service cannot function effectively as it is paralysed by Affirmative Action (AA), no economic plan will bring about growth no matter how good it looks on paper.
The President's plans include establishing economic forums to stimulate growth, reprioritising public expenditure to facilitate job creation, establishing an infrastructure fund as well as taking decisive action to address the problems in education and health services.
He also made mention of improving municipal infrastructure and that it is necessary to attract investors to the mining sector in particular.
The FF Plus holds the opinion that the reprioritising of public expenditure to facilitate job creation must not result in greater debt and more loans. The government must simply keep to its budget.
It is not the state's responsibility to create jobs, the state is supposed to implement sensible polices and legislation to create an environment conducive to economic growth. That is what will attract investors and lead to job creation.
However, quite the opposite is happening at present as proposed policies like expropriation without compensation are causing great damage, which cannot be rectified by means of a few suggestions that merely sound good.
President Ramaphosa also did not spell out how he is going to implement and execute these plans. Our municipalities are a good example: there is money available for maintenance and upgrading, but a combination of incompetence and corruption make the successful execution of any plan nearly impossible.
The President would do well to rather announce plans to improve productivity and boost investor confidence in the country and abolish AA and restrictive labour legislation. And then economic growth is sure to follow.
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