South Africa Government Lacks Coherent Economic Plan, Group Says

(Bloomberg) —

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A worker drives a forklift truck to transport a crate of aluminum cans in the warehouse at the Nampak Ltd. Bevcan Springs manufacturing plant in Springs, South Africa, on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. Manufacturing production, mining output and retail sales plunged in South Africa in the three months through June as the country imposed a strict lockdown on March 27 that shuttered almost all activity except essential services for five weeks.

An economic plan presented by the South African government last week was “fragmented and uncoordinated,” suggesting there’s been little discussion on the proposals, the nation’s main business lobby group said.

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State officials met business and labor-union representatives Aug. 13 to discuss ways to revive an economy set to contract this year by the most in nine decades. Industry delegates offered a 900-slide presentation and labor groups showed “detailed” proposals, with the government presenting a 17-slide “draft” plan, Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso said Monday.

“It appeared to have been pulled together at the last minute from a variety of different sources without any discussion between them,” Mavuso said. “There are good people — inside the Presidential Economic Advisory Council and among the analysts at National Treasury, for example. But why are they not being mobilized to do the research to form a coherent plan?”

President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Saturday the government is working on an urgent economic-recovery program, details of which will be announced in “the next few weeks.” Mavuso said Ramaphosa has yet to deliver on a pledge made four months ago to present a “decisive” economic plan.

“He promised in April we would have it ‘within days,’” she said. It was clear from the presentation to business and labor last week that “not much has really been done since.”

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