Maimane’s seven-step plan to overcome the recession

DA leader Mmusi Maimane has proposed a seven-step recession recovery plan following the announcement by Stats SA that the economy was now in a technical recession.

The plan is all but academic, of course, since the DA is not the country’s governing party.

Maimane at a briefing said the country was beginning to see the consequences of the economic mismanagement and proposed the following:

• Scrap wreckless economic policies such as the proposed nationalisation of the Reserve Bank and the undermining of property rights through expropriation without compensation.
• Announce the privatisation, or part privatisation of SAA, and the split of Eskom into separate power production and distribution businesses.
• End Eskom’s monopoly and allow cities to purchase directly from independent power producers, increasing competition and lowering cost.
• Introduce a fiscal austerity package to contain current spending and stabilise national debt at 50% of GDP. Commit to funding any further revenue shortfalls by cutting wasteful expenditure, not through new taxes.
• Cut the size of cabinet to around 15 ministries.
• Exempt small businesses employing fewer than 250 employees from complying with restrictive labour legislation, other than the basic conditions of employment.
• Immediately pay all outstanding invoices owed to small businesses from national and provincial governments, amounting to a fiscal stimulus for small businesses of R 20.7 billion and R 7.1 billion, respectively.

Maimane said the seven interventions would get the economy’s heart beating again.

“They represent a change in approach from the belief that more state intervention is the only antidote to the failure of previous state intervention. Instead, we pursue a lean, capable state that creates conditions that promote investment in a broadly open, competitive, market-driven economy.”

He said the DA had a plan to get the economy growing.

“A healthy, growing economy will be able to collect the taxes required to fund better education and healthcare systems, a compassionate welfare programme, effective land reform and restitution programmes, and an effective police service, trained, resourced, and equipped to be able to maintain law and order, and keep people safe,” Maimane said.