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Johannesburg - South Africa does not have the skills necessary to create independent, critical economic thinking, a University of London economist said on Monday.
"South African economists have in general continued to be wedded to this orthodoxy that has dominated over the past few years," Professor Ben Fine said at the launch of an industrial policy course at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
"Reducing the role of the state, liberalising the financial sector... .They tend to take that as the point of departure.
"The country is not in a position to train and provide for alternative ways of thinking in terms of making alternative policies for the South African context."
South Africa had a poor supply of economists in its academic world and public sector, he said.
"The idea is for this course to create the capacity for broader and innovative thinking in economic sphere."
Financial services were a prime example of economic policy that had to be re-examined, Fine said. It was the fastest-growing sector in the country since the end of apartheid.
"It makes up 20% of GDP, yet 40% of South Africans don't benefit from any financial services at all.
"What stands out is that these developments, demand an alternative way of thinking about how financial sector can serve the economy and how it interacts with macroeconomic performance."
South Africa, Fine said, had to shift away from "huge" outflows of capital, massive expansion of the financial sector and the highly capital-intensive development around mining and energy, at the expense of labour-intensive jobs.
Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said the course to be run at Wits University was launched because of an awareness that the country lacked the skills and capacity for economic thinking.
"Much of teaching and research in economics has too narrow a focus on mainstream theories and economic models," he said.
"The reality is that the great recession we passed through, and the global economic crisis we are passing through in various forms, has revealed the inadequacy of many of the central propositions of mainstream economic theory.
"Courses like this are going to develop the cadres who are going to spearhead our economic development."
Davies said there was an intolerance for non-orthodox economic ideas and theories presented as though they were "immutable truths".
