The ANC has reiterated its mission to expand the mandate of the Reserve Bank. Although the governing party has yet to announce the terms and scope of the expansion, it has said the Reserve Bank should also focus on unemployment and growing the economy. The Bank currently focuses on price stability.
Following last weekend’s ANC Lekgotla, the party says it wants to almost halve unemployment in the next five years. Stats SA earlier revealed that GDP contracted by 3.2% causing the Rand to weaken by around 1% against a basket of major currencies.
ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe says, “Those are discussions that are ongoing in the organisation as part of exploring the different options. It is in our interest that the central bank is stable, it continues to discharge its own mandate and makes a positive contribution on the kind of growth that we want to see in the country. At the right time when we have clearly formulated a view on how all of these things are going to be approached, we’ll be able to communicate and convey our message, we are quite confident now and happy with the work that the central bank is doing to try and make sure that we achieve the levels of stability required but we also boost investor confidence as well.
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