Employees may be smiling, but some economists are not happy at the impact of the 11-day shutdown of business because of public holidays this month.
“It’s absolutely negative. I cannot overstate the damage that it does to the economy. This inordinate number of holidays bunched together affects national productivity and global competitiveness,” said Iraj Abedian, the chief economist at Pan-African Investment and Research Services.
“While other countries typically work for 11 months of the year, South Africa works for only 10, taking December and April off.
“The (April) public holidays effectively take one month out of the year. Three days before nobody pays attention, and three days after everyone has a hangover. Every other country is working a month extra,” he said.
“It is a matter that for years has been under discussion during this season. And then year after year, nobody does anything about it.”
He blamed South Africa’s holiday culture, saying we felt entitled to take December and April off, and that we needed to choose between the two.
FNB chief economist Cees Bruggemans agreed that South Africa had a holiday culture, but said that we should not assume that because people were on holiday, production would suffer.
“I don’t think it will make that much difference to GDP. People are supposed to produce a certain amount in a given period. If (holidays) overlap, like we’re having at the moment, you still want to achieve your ultimate production. People will just work that much harder during work hours,” said Bruggemans.
He also pointed out that although South Africa was known for its holiday culture, other countries were perhaps better at hiding it.
However, Abedian said the amount of productivity lost would be equal to a month’s work.
“If you look at the month of April, nobody does any business. It’s worse than Christmas. Add December syndrome to April syndrome and you’re now diagnosing a very severe economic disease in this country.” - The Mercury