INSIDE POLITICS|
THE Thabo Mbeki Foundation has urged the government to rework the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan as it was not implementable in its current form.
President Cyril Ramaphosa released the ERRP late last year as part of ensuring the reconstruction and recovery of the economy which was damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mbeki’s foundation said government and the country must accept that the government’s ERRP, published on 15 October 2020, was essentially a Vision, not the required Transformative Plan.
“Accordingly, because of the size and strategic importance of the challenge to eradicate poverty, alienation and inequity, NEDLAC must reconvene to conclude a Strategic Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (SERRP), Government must convene NEDLAC for this purpose as soon as possible,” said the TMF.
The TMF added that NEDLAC should table the SERRP by 30 June 2021.
The SERRP should be a three-year-plan covering the period July 2021 – June 2024.
The foundation said as the social partners negotiate the SERRP, they must be ready and willing to make the necessary hard choices, sacrifices and trade-offs.
“Even as the NEDLAC negotiations are proceeding, Government should work seriously to build the required State capacity,” it added.
“Even while it is negotiating the SERRP, NEDLAC must engage in a sustained communication campaign to inform the public as part of the process of helping to ensure the active and informed involvement of the population in the implementation of the SERRP once it is completed.”
At the heart of the plan’s aims is the recovery of the economy and job recreation through aggressive infrastructure investment, re-industrialisation, localisation and export promotion, bolstered through resource mobilisation and the strengthening of the state’s capacity.
The foundation said it was also clear that the social partners at Nedlac had not reached consensus as the government had pointed out, and that this was reflected by the production of a separate and more practicable plan, the Accelerated Economic Recovery Strategy (AERS), which was produced by Business 4 SA on behalf of organised business.
“Given the foregoing, the framing of the government document suggested that contrary to what the President (Ramaphosa) had said in his parliamentary address, in fact there was no substantive Nedlac agreement on economic reconstruction and recovery,” the TMF said.
The foundation has recently penned a discussion document on South Africa’s social compacting and economic recovery, with special focus on the ERRP.
The TMF said while the government had emphasised the need for social compacting, it had become clear that there was still no Nedlac agreement on economic reconstruction.
The foundation said the government had to incorporate the AERS plan into its 10-year ERRP, as it was a three-year implementable plan with the projected creation of 1.5 million jobs and an investment of R1 trillion from business.
“Among other notable things is the fact that this is the very first time during the 26 years of our democracy that business has come together to make a public and solemn commitment to invest in the South African economy,” the TMF argued.
The foundation has called for Nedlac to reconvene this year and conclude a workable plan, which had also to include the proposals made by the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) on economic recovery.
Among the proposals made by the PEAC is the need for debt reduction by the state for the long term, dealing with corruption, and building state capacity.
(Source: INSIDE POLITICS)
