SACCI Media Release
Wednesday 25 October 2017
SOUTH AFRICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY RESPONSE TO MTBPS
South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) welcomes the MTBPS delivered by Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba this afternoon in Parliament.
Whilst the Minister dealt with the contextual issues and gave an overview of the challenges and what the government intends to do in the economic environment, we were hoping that the Minister would be more explicit with specifics on the agenda to deal with the challenges facing South Africa. In particular we did not hear much on progress made with the implementation of the National Development Plan as it is the core policy of government.
We are anxious and conscious of the risk and challenges posed by youth unemployment. In terms of the Q2 figures released by Stats SA, youth unemployment was reflected at 38%. Additionally 32% of youth between the ages of 15-24 were neither in education, training or employment. We believe this is a ticking time-bomb that requires an urgent allocation of resources as it may create political and social instability over the next 10 years. Social and political stability are necessary ingredients to make SA an attractive investment destination. No advanced constitution can diffuse the risk posed by social instability and the perceived lack of social justice.
We urge the government to put concrete steps and resources backed by specific and sustainable projects and programmes to address this significant risk. The NDP has projected that 24m jobs will be created by 2030 on the back of an average economic growth of 5%. We are far from this projection and we were hoping that the Minister would give a clear and comprehensive detail on the specific plans, ideas and projects being rolled out to ignite economic growth.
We were also hoping that the Minister would deal with how the funding shortfall would be addressed. The selling of the Telkom stake is not expected to yield more than R14bn and the deficit still needs additional funding or a constriction in government expenditure in the absence of increasing taxes.
We welcome the initiative on the start-up fund being developed via the small business development ministry and this should be encouraged. We also welcome the Minister’s pronouncements on dealing effectively with governance and performance of our SOEs.
Our conclusion is that in the rapidly changing world, decisive and specific ideas and projects would be required to address the significant challenges we face.
As the SACCI we are looking forward to engaging the Minister further in addressing these challenges.
Alan Mukoki
CEO
