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Sandton – South Africa should forget about capitalism, communism or even socialism and focus on pragmatism, Alexander Forbes chief executive Edward Kieswetter said on Wednesday.
Kieswetter was part of a panel discussion at the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (Asisa) conference at the Sandton Convention Centre.
Pragmatism is defined as “an approach that evaluates theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application”.
Kieswetter said Alexander Forbes raised three times the capital they required overseas. An investor in Asia told him it was because they “invest in companies, not countries”.
“They look through political noise and see the gems,” he said. “We have some of the best run companies and world-class management teams and we should take pride in that and retain that.”
SA stumbling along...
Economist JP Landman told delegates that South Africa had a good story to tell if you dig beneath the numbers.
He said while the economy will see no miracles going forward, “it won’t experience an apocalypse either”.
South Africa will continue “stumbling along”, with per capita income rising by between 0.4% and 0.8% to 1.4%.
... not good enough
A panel of some of South Africa’s leading financial brains said “stumbling along” was simply not good enough.
“It is the wrong thing to say we can stumble along,” said Kieswetter, echoing the sentiments of his fellow panellists, which included JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King, Liberty Group CEO Thabo Dloti and deputy SARB governor Daniel Mminele.
“We have to challenge ourselves to do more, lest we think that stumbling along is good enough,” said Kieswetter.
Land of consumption
Mminele warned that South Africa was still a country of consumption, with 60% of the GDP coming from this sector as opposed to 20% from investment.
“The target is to have 30% of the GDP coming from investment, with a third of that coming from the private sector,” he said.
Mminele spoke about the role of the monetary policy committee, explaining that it was crucial that confidence in the rand as well as regulatory controls were improved.
Business and government must work together
Newton-King told delegates that business and government had to work together more to improve the economic stability and growth of the country.
“We underplay the ability of the business community to make a difference,” she said. “We have sufficient resources to make our way through the problems facing the country.
“There is a desire on behalf of the government to partner with business, which is exciting,” she said.
“These positive voices were not here two years ago.”
Rally behind NDP
She called for a culture change in the country. “We need clarity on the National Development Plan (NDP) as a rallying point of delivery and not just rhetoric,” she said.
Dloti said we have lamented the absence of a vision, but now we have got that in the NDP.
“A roadmap doesn’t implement itself,” he said. “That’s the hardest part.
“We have good things that we can leverage on [to make the NDP work].”
* The travel costs to attend this conference were paid for by Asisa.
