Cape Town - Since the NDP was adopted as formal government economic policy, analysts have commented on the fact that, although the NDP is an excellent economic policy, very little of the plan has been implemented.
Business Report decided to explore the possibility of the construction of a NDP Monitor to evaluate to what extent the plan is implemented and the significance thereof.
Business Report will introduce the NDP Monitor Index in the next few months. This critically important initiative was discussed and proposed to Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa at the WEF Meetings in Davos in January; he indicated his full support for the initiative. Ministers Jeff Radebe and Ebrahim Patel were also approached and both supported the monitoring of the NDP.
The monitoring of the NDP is an initiative between Business Report, Rebalance Fund Managers, the Public Investment Corporation and the Bureau of Market Research (Unisa).
International best practice examples have demonstrated that good economic policies which are well implemented have strong positive economic and socioeconomic impacts.
Such positive impacts pertain directly to the triple socioeconomic challenges as formulated by government, namely job creation to lower unemployment, income generation to reduce poverty and reducing income inequalities to address the very skewed distribution of income.
In order to address the said triple challenge based on international best practices the NDP was formulated and was adopted as the official economic/development policy of government.
Positive impacts
"The question can, however, be asked to what extent this plan had been implemented and to what level positive impacts resulted from such implementation” said Dr Chris Harmse, Rebalance Fund Managers chief economist.
Although various analysts opined that the NDP has never been implemented and that it had zero effect thus far, this is not completely true.
Instead of making sweeping statements that the NDP has been implemented or not and whether it had an positive effects or not, more differentiated information is required to determine to what extent the NDP has been implemented, if partially implemented to determine what has been implemented and what has not been implemented.
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It needs to be determined what positive impacts it has had, if any.
In evaluating the implementation and efficacy of the NDP the index will focus on the following aspects which will constitute sub-problems for research purposes:
To what extent has the NDP plan been implemented?
How strong was the positive impact of this plan on economic growth stimulation?
How strong was the positive impact of this plan on job creation?
How strong was the positive impact of this plan on poverty reduction?
How strong was the impact of this plan on economic development?
How strong was the impact of this plan on socioeconomic development?
How strong was the impact of this plan on investor, business and consumer confidence?