Publications
Partners
Cape Town - It is crucial for South Africa to improve its competitiveness, according to a discussion document issued by the ANC for its National General Council (NGC) taking place in October.
Compared to its peers, South Africa is a serious underperformer, growing at rates out of sync with its peers, according to the document.
The improvements to increase competitiveness proposed by the document, include "moderating administered price increases, reducing the anomalous port and freight subsidies for commodity exporters and better managing the level and volatility of the rand".
In this way the ANC wants to grow the pool of industrialists exporting to their traditional markets, while also finding alternative markets, primarily in the relatively faster growing African, Asian and Latin American economies.
The party acknowledges that, despite low interest rates, private sector investment has fallen since the 2008 financial crisis and remains weak. At the same time household debt has risen dangerously rand a substantial current account deficit has developed.
In the past three years, prolonged strikes in the platinum and manufacturing sectors, and at the South African Post Office have severely disrupted economic growth, the document states.
Growth of SA compared to its emerging markets peers:
READ: ANC slates cartels for keeping out new players
These factors have reduced the positive impact generated by the fall in the oil price for oil importers like South Africa, the document states.
Furthermore, weak eurozone demand for South African manufactured exports and reduced demand for the country’s mining and processed metal sector commodity exports from China’s slowing economy is expected to continue to impede South Africa’s economic growth.
“The core structural weakness of South Africa’s economy is its continued incorporation into the global division of labour as producer and exporter of primary commodities, and importer of value-added, manufactured products – typical of many colonised countries in Africa,” according to the document.
“This constrains our ability to create jobs at an appropriate skill level and in sufficient numbers to address South Africa’s unemployment challenge, and bestows the benefits of local value-addition (jobs, company profits which can be re-invested in the economy, tax revenue and industrial deepening) on our trading partners.”
It is, therefore, imperative, according to the ANC, to act decisively to industrialise, add value to local and regionally available commodities, and grow the productive sectors of the economy.
ALSO READ: Three property issues the ANC will tackle
