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Johannesburg - South Africa needs to focus on boosting economic growth and creating jobs after avoiding a downgrade to "junk status" last week, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Monday.
S&P Global Ratings affirmed the investment grade rating of Africa's most industrialised country on Friday.
"We must demonstrate to the world that we are capable of raising growth above the 0.6 and 0.7% mark and begin to head to the 2% mark," Gordhan said during an interview on SABC television.
Gordhan said on Friday the decision by S&P Global Ratings to keep its investment-grade credit rating was positive and showed that the country was resilient.
Speaking on Talk Radio 702, Gordhan said that growth needed to be expanded to avoid a downgrade by S&P in December.
The Treasury welcomed the decision by S&P, saying it would give government more time to demonstrate the concrete implementation of economic reforms.
"The benefit of this decision is that South Africa is given more time to demonstrate concrete implementation of reforms aimed at achieving higher levels of growth and place public finances on a sustainable path," Treasury said in a statement.
A cut to below investment grade would have pushed up borrowing costs, making it harder to plug a budget deficit estimated at 3.2% of GDP in the 2016/17 financial year.
