Cape Town - Government's anti-poverty interventions will not succeed unless the poor demonstrate a willingness to improve their circumstances, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Wednesday
Briefing the media during the launch of the World Bank's Commission for Growth and Development report in Cape Town, Manuel said government's anti-poverty programme could only work if the poor took more responsibility for the improvement of their situation.
"The poor should get actively involved - unfortunately this link is lacking in South Africa."
Government was concerned about the fact that some of the rural poor no longer engaged in productive activities such as farming just because they were now receiving social grants.
Land was now laying fallow in rural areas because people were getting social grants, he said.
The report, compiled by a team of economics experts, identified safety nets as important tools for reducing poverty. It draws its conclusions from the distinctive characteristics of countries that had registered phenomenal growth rates over the years.
None of these countries had managed to reduce poverty before realising a higher economic growth rate.
"The growth report... kills off once and for all the misguided notion that you can lift people out of poverty in the absence of growth," said economist and chairperson of the commission Professor Michael Spence.
African countries with natural resources were growing quickly thanks to the hike in commodity prices.
The challenge was how to use this boom to reduce the region's dependency on commodities, and how to face food shortages, a problem that might worsen as the climate warms.
Botswana is one of only 13 countries that have been successful in achieving sustained high growth.
South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda and Madagascar are countries that, having achieved macroeconomic stability, can now afford to think about long-term growth.
Make up for brain drain
The report calls for industrialised economies to grant African countries time-bound trade preferences to manufactured exports to help them overcome the disadvantages of being "late starters", and to finance the expansion of Africa's tertiary education to make up for Africa's brain drain.
Some of the report's main recommendations specific to Africa include:
- Increasing agricultural productivity and output;
- Reducing the cost of doing business through simplification of administrative procedures;
- Continuing progress in elementary school enrolments, improving quality of education, and committing more resources to secondary and tertiary education, ensuring the inclusion of girls;
- Encouraging regional co-operation and integration -- key for landlocked countries;
- Giving all citizens/sectors access to secure channels for saving and credit;
- Adopting best practices in the area of the exploitation of natural resources, such as setting up a fund for resource rents, which pays out a percentage of the total each year for the benefit of the citizens; and
- Continuing to focus on macroeconomic stability and responsible fiscal policies.
- Sapa