Friday 7th June 2019
In a statement issued by the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI), the CEO of SACCI Mr Alan Mukoki said:
QUOTE: The post ANC NEC Lekgotla announcements, pronouncements and denouncements are precisely the problem that should be avoided at all costs, as all these cause markets instability.
The issue of policy uncertainty has been brought into the public domain all over again.
As the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI), we urge the ruling party and government to streamline and professionalise its communications efforts and capability, especially when it comes to communicating on matters of economic, fiscal, monetary and other key policy issues. The ad hoc stratified nature of various spokespeople on these subjects is self-defeating.
The unfortunate experience of the past few days has been that of a government at war with itself. The uncoordinated approach of the ruling party, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), the Finance Ministry, all weighing in on the subject and expressing different interpretations and views on the same policy matter around the SARB, has created a lot of the avoidable confusion and fog.
Without discouraging freedom of expression and the established vitality of the South African body politic, we urge all key stakeholders in the ruling party, the fiscal and monetary authorities concerned to refrain from issuing and publicly denouncing each other’s statements on policy issues, as this adds to confusion and policy uncertainty and affects investor confidence.
It is important that all key stakeholders find common ground in agreeing what statements should be issued in representing SA to the outside world.
Any statements being made, and media interviews granted on fiscal, monetary and other key policy issues, make it into the consumption of international media platforms.
Most of the debate around the SARB was already in the ruling party’s January 2019 Manifesto. As business we were looking forward to the ruling party’s clear policy decisions on the matter. What we experienced was unfortunate and caused unnecessary consternation and uncertainty.
South Africa needs to focus and scale up its excellence and competence in this regard and a better professional and coordinated approach must now be looked into more urgently on how and what to communicate and by whom.
UNQUOTE
Contact: Mr Alan Mukoki 082 551 1159
Author: Derrick Markotter
RCCI Webmaster Derrick runs a boutique web marketing agency, IdealMedia Marketing.