Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling ANC and its partners will only begin a debate on broadening the mandate of the central bank in 2010, alliance insiders told Reuters on Monday.
The ANC and its partners in the communist party, trade union federation Cosatu and civics organisation agreed at a weekend summit to review the focus of South African Reserve Bank, possibly widening it beyond targeting inflation.
The alliance said a team representing all its partners would also look at the impact on the economy of a strong rand, which has rallied more than 20% against the dollar this year.
A delegate who did want to be named said the alliance partners agreed that the mandate had to be looked at to consider whether the central bank should take wider social issues into account in making their decisions.
"There has always been an argument that the mandate is narrow and it needs to be broadened," he said.
"We have a global crisis, we have set ourselves an overall target of job creation ... does the mandate of the Reserve Bank as it is now help us to do those things?"
Another delegate said the make-up and the mandate of the team was yet to be finalised and that the first meeting would only take place next year.
"At this stage, they did not decide who would sit there ... (it) will depend on them (members of the team) when they meet," he told Reuters.
The bank has the task of fighting inflation, keeping it between 3% and 6%. In September, inflation was 6.1% year-on-year, compared with almost 14% a year ago.
Critics say this had led to interest rates that are too high, which Cosatu blames for exacerbating poverty.
They want the target scrapped and interest rates cut to help pull the economy out of its first recession in nearly two decades which has resulted in about one million job losses.
The central bank has cut its repo rate - its base lending rate - by 5 percentage points since December despite inflation still being outside the band, although at 7 percent it remains high by global standards.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said Cosatu was still to name its nominees for the team reviewing the central bank's mandate, and that the composition, mandate and powers of the team were still being ironed out.
"You don't go into a big meeting like that (alliance summit) and go into precisely who is going to be on those committees," he said. "It will be up to the alliance partners to nominate people."
- Reuters