The National Treasury Economist, Dr Duncan Pieterse, says the public’s engagement in the Finance Minister Tito Mboweni‘s plan will enhance government’s programmes to tackle unemployment and poverty.
Mboweni has released a strategy titled ‘Economic Transformation, Inclusive Growth and Competitiveness’ which is aimed at growing the economy.
The document was published on the National Treasury’s website without any prior announcements. Mboweni is calling on the public to submit comments on the strategy.
Pieterse who led the compilation of the document says new ideas are welcome to guide government on the best way to implement the strategies contained in the document.
“Interventions articulated in this document, some of them have already started to be implemented by government and I think that’s critical, it is not as though we are waiting for this document to be finalised. We do need fresh ideas which is why we are engaging other departments and the public in order to provide those ideas and thinking. In government there are few things that are changing in terms of how both the President and the ministers have started to work in cabinet and elsewhere, to ensure the manner in which we take some of these things forward actually shifts the focus towards implementation.”
Another Economist Thabi Leoka says Mboweni’s new plan has the potential to change the fortunes of the embattled power utility Eskom.
Leoka says the strategy is part of an important general conversation.
“It is not a plan, so this is a strategy report – which is slightly different because it is a road map – but it doesn’t exactly state that we need to do certain things at a specific time; it does have estimations of growth but it is also not similar to the NDP and other growth plans where we’ve had a much higher performance, our potential growth, we often undershot because the expectation was little too high considering our current growth levels.”
Click below to read the document:
