Proposals to emerge from study
March 22, 2009
By Donwald Pressly
Van Aardt suggests the private sector must create the bulk of jobs in the long run but the creation of "decent work" should become a primary focus of policy.
Higher skilled immigration should be encouraged so that a bigger skills pool becomes available to help sustain a higher economic growth path.
Glen Robbins, an industrial policy specialist, believes future industrial policy should take a card from the book of Zuma who, as KwaZulu-Natal's economic affairs MEC, supported the creation of a regional economic forum which brought together business, labour and government to chart a common path for regional economic challenges.
Future industrial policy needed to "a far greater extent to accommodate the diversity of local experiences - and the mobilisation of local agents of change - if national policies were to be successful".
Iraj Abedian and Tania Ajam, both economists, warn that the emergence of a serious global recession would probably lead to a fall in the country's revenues. At the same time the ANC mooted the adoption of a fairly ambitious fiscal commitment, much of it welfarist. Abedian, who warns of a debt trap if social welfare payments
continue to rise, said "we must not create a populist, welfarist fiscal framework that is detrimental to the sustainable upliftment of the poor and inimical to economic performance."
Riaan de Lange and Reyno Seymore, trade and competition policy experts, say SA's tariff policy needed to go back to basics. The tariff book "requires simplification" and should be reviewed. - Donwald Pressly
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