Johannesburg - The National Development Plan (NDP) needed South Africans to stop pointing fingers at “wrongdoers” and instead help the vision take shape, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday.
“We should be solving problems rather than kicking the can down the road.”
Speaking in Richards Bay following an election campaign in KwaZulu-Natal, Gordhan said he had faith that the NDP would be implemented but that the private sector and citizens must take part in the process.
The government had done a good job of providing citizens with access to health care and education and the focus should now shift to the quality of the services, he said.
SACP spokesman Alex Mashilo said that while the tripartite alliance agreed on some parts of the NDP, the economic chapter in particular was a significant point of contention.
“Our economy would be vulnerable to speculative drives from the market should these plans in the economic chapter be implemented,” he said.
Mashilo said the problem with the NDP was not that it had not been implemented but that the fundamentals were misleading.
Following the tripartite alliance’s summit in early September, a task team was assembled to deal with the points of contention, labelled as “legitimate concerns” by the alliance.
The NDP envisions the South African economy will achieve 120 percent growth in real per capita gross domestic product by 2030; a 4.5 percent average growth a year until 2030. The economy is currently set to grow 3.1 percent at most this year, bogged down by increasing unemployment and a volatile currency.
A recent study by the African Development Bank placed South Africa in Africa’s 10 slowest-growing economies and analysts predict it will soon be surpassed by oil-rich Nigeria as the economic powerhouse of the continent.
Gordhan spoke about the vulnerability of local as well as international markets to the US’s quantitative easing, saying it was difficult to predict the outcome of tapering as it had never been done before.
“No one has the textbook answer for quantitative easing, no one can say chapter two, line 65 and you will find the answer in terms of how you manage the tapering of quantitative easing,” he said.
“How do we develop those shock absorbers that will ensure and manage any untoward events that might come our way?” he asked.
Gordhan said the state’s role in the implementation of the NDP was not an intrusive one, rather it was one that would set up the framework for the private sector to function, adding that some state intervention was necessary.
He said the country was committed to a “more disciplined approach to spending”.
“If the economy grows then we all grow, if it doesn’t, then we all have to take what comes with that as well, which is a more disciplined approach to spending,” he explained. - Business Report