[ad_1]
Several experts have criticized President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan, calling it a “wish list of imaginary blessings” and a recycling of old and failed policies.
Talking with him City pressThe founding director of the Free Market Foundation, Leon Louw, called for bold pro-market reforms rather than the same promises South Africans have seen before.
“The downside of this plan is the recycling of old and failed policies, such as trying to make state companies efficient, the massive redistribution of wealth-generating activities to consuming activities and wanting to produce locally what should be imported,” he said.
The first undersecretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, Solly Mapaila, told the City Press that the idea that South Africa is insolvent is a lie and called for the use of pension plan funds.
“We have enough money. We have sufficient resources in retirement funds and pension funds, ”he said.
“These funds belong to South African workers and should drive development.”
Ramaphosa presented the government plan to rescue the South African economy after the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on October 15.
He said the plan aimed to provide growth that was both inclusive and transformative, building on common ground between government, businesses and workers.
The Ramaphosa Recovery Plan
The economic recovery plan aims to create jobs, reindustrialize the economy, accelerate economic reforms, and end corruption, among others.
“Job creation is critical to the economic recovery plan,” Ramaphosa said.
The President explained that the economic recovery plan has four priority interventions, which are the following:
- Infrastructure implementation – Increased investment in projects to improve social development infrastructure such as schools, water, sanitation, housing, and critical road and rail systems.
- Expanding power generation – The acceleration of the Integrated Resource Plan (PIR), which will mean a substantial increase in the contribution of renewable energy storage.
- Stimulus to employment – The creation of more jobs in the public and private sectors, starting with the employment of 300,000 people as educational support personnel and large-scale labor interventions by the government and the social partners.
- Industrial growth – Support for local production and increase in exported goods, driven by objectives of locating goods in areas such as health, basic consumer goods, construction materials and transport rolling stock.
Terrible, archaic and disturbing
The country’s economic recovery plan was also received criticism by analysts ahead of its announcement last week.
Analysts described it as “terrible, archaic and disturbing,” and the founding director of the Center for Economic Development and Transformation, Duma Gqubule, went one step further, saying the government does not have an economic recovery plan.
Reflecting Louw’s criticism, several analysts said the plan lacked a coherent economic program that would lead to economic recovery and is simply a “list of items without strategic thinking.”
Gqubule said the plan appears to have been written by an intern. “At least 95% of the items mentioned in the economic recovery plan have not been budgeted,” he said.
He added that this plan is no different from the previous wish lists this administration has provided over the last decade or two.
the Daily Maverick plan analysisby Ed Stoddard and Tim Cohen echoes these views.
“Much of the wish list includes goals that the ANC-led government has long aspired to, but never achieved,” they said.
Now Read: Ramaphosa’s Big Broadband Promises for South Africa
[ad_2]
