South Africa needs R1.27 trillion
South Africa needs an additional $75 billion (R1.27 trillion) in annual investments to meet its growth objectives, the former leader of the continent’s biggest lender by assets said.
“Growth above all is what’s required,” Jacko Maree, who was CEO of Standard Bank from 1999 to 2013, said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Maree also served a five-year term as one of Ramaphosa’s special envoys for investment from 2018.
“There really is only one real long-term solution, and that is fixed investment,” he said.
Africa’s most industrialised economy is still contending with the fallout from a more than decade-long energy crisis and an era of government corruption that has driven up the cost of doing business, weighing on investor sentiment and economic growth.
Output has expanded by an average of 0.4% since 2018, when Cyril Ramaphosa took over as president and started reform efforts.
While the government in 2012 said fixed investment should reach 30% of gross domestic product by 2030 to foster inclusive growth in one of the world’s most unequal countries, the ratio currently stands at less than 15%, said Maree.
The goal was part of the National Development Plan, the fifth economic blueprint formally adopted since the African National Congress came to power more than three decades ago.
South Africa should draw on the success of its renewable-energy investment program to create bankable projects with clear frameworks across ports, rail, tourism and other industries that could unlock capital held by pension funds, large businesses and other investors, he said.
Stronger cooperation between business and government is essential to stimulate the economy, said Nhlanhla Nene, South Africa’s former finance minister.
While the National Treasury in October estimated the economy could grow by 2% by the end of this decade, output of at least 3% is needed for meaningful employment and to improve living standards, he said.
Nene, who is also chair of the African unit of the European House-Ambrosetti, an Italian research firm, is working with top executives to support economic growth and infrastructure development in the region.
“Our focus is on investment more than anything, and we’re actually trying to build economic community, and we’re in economic communities,” he said.
The think tank’s Global Attractiveness Index ranks South Africa first among 54 countries on the continent due to its strong logistics and trade sectors, as well as its institutions.
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Conversation
8 commentsSouth Africa is like the kid who whistles while taking a shortcut through the graveyard.
Our “brave leaders fighting the good fight” are like the big loudmouths who instigate the fight because they feel they have the support of the crowd behind them (read: the world’s backing) but are ready to slither off down a dark alley and leave the actual fighting to others, as soon as they have what they want.
The “brave talk” backing them up is nothing more than the woke talk that is constantly giving them an illusion of legitimacy.
That is why the same meaningless phrases are constantly repeated.
This is like the 4 year old arguing by saying things like “my dad is bigger than your dad” or “my dad’s car is faster than your dad’s car”.
Why the constant nonsense about “Africa’s most industrialized economy” and “one of the world’s most unequal countries”?
See above.
If SA is still “Africa’s most industrialized economy” the only thing it should be telling anyone is how far ahead of the rest of Africa it was in the 80s and early 90s.
The question is WHY was it so far ahead?
They dare not tell you that because if they do it removes exactly what they blame their failures on.
As for “unequal countries”, look at the development of the people and the levels of industrialization. If other countries in Africa had started with our level of industrialization we would have many challengers for that title.
In real terms SA is far less industrialized than it was in the pre-ANC days.
Why are so many other African countries have growth far higher than ours?
Why does “such a relatively industrialized Nation” struggle to obtain the levels of investment it should?
If we are honest we know the answers- the ideologies and policies of the loudmouth kids leading the fight, while their “backup” is the hordes of woke and liberal kids repeating the nonsense about “most industrialized economy” and “most unequal country” and “colonialism, apartheid, racism and other grim monsters”.
In 30 years this is fifth “economic blueprint” under the ANC National Development Plan”.
Clearly they all need to be redesigned, but for any of that to be meaningful everything behind the plans and those drawing up the Economic Blueprints needs to change.
The history of the developed nations of the world did not begin in the 1900s and 1800s, it began thousands of years before.
They had their own history of being colonized (not once but many times, and not by people simply settling and bringing advancements but by military forces who enslaved them.
Oh, and slavery was far from only a “black African thing” it is all that is stolen about, because the descendents of those slaves want it that way and control the narrative.
Until we get over ourselves, our recent history, and stop blaming all our shortcomings on that for our failures, lack of development and regression in industrialization we well get nowhere, slowly.