Long road to economic recovery

South Africa has never faced a set of crises that is as intractable and as mutually reinforcing as it does now.
Everything from levels of poverty and political fractures to our catastrophic fiscal and employment situations is worse than ever.
Centre for Development and Enterprise’s executive director, Ann Bernstein suggested that now was the time for urgent actions that pointed clearly to a fresh start.

She suggested four actions:

1.  The immediate development of emergency provisions to free up the economy and allow new firms to grow quickly. About 12-million people may be unemployed by now, and we are in desperate need of reforms that will allow firms to create as many jobs as possible.
2. Without the resolution of the deep crises in the energy sector, we cannot make economic progress. We need speedy action to unlock the licensing of generation capacity and the opening of the fifth procurement window for renewable energy.
3. New and effective measures to fight corruption must be implemented. Whether it is emergency courts, the creation of new offenses or additional use of private-sector legal capacity, SA has to show it is serious about fighting corruption.
4. Businesses should be calling for reform and expansion of the public works programme. We cannot create all the jobs we need immediately, and publicly-funded jobs could play a key role in creating opportunities. There are limits to what this can achieve, but a well-thought-through programme could help many people at a time of great hardship.

“The state can be fixed, but it’s important to accept that this will take years — time we do not have. In every sector of our economy; agriculture, local government, food distribution or wherever you look; we have to free up private actors, the only capacity SA now has to build a bridge away from disaster,” Bernstein suggested.