Kganyago calls for sweeping reforms
• Proposed changes include deregulation of transport and electricity sectors
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago has called for sweeping reforms to macroeconomic policies to boost economic growth and lessen exchangerate volatility and sovereign risk.
Proposed changes include structural reforms, deregulation of the country’s transport and electricity sectors, lowering the inflation target and a shift back to predictable, transparent fiscal policy rules.
“With the rise in debt created by our efforts to confront weakening growth and failures of state enterprises, there is little chance of improving credit quality without new rules and more strategic use of macroeconomic policy,” Kganyago said at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington on Tuesday.
Lowering the inflation target to 3%, the bottom of the current range, would be a “major benefit to fiscal policy” and economic growth, the governor said. It would also reduce the potential for an upward drift in the real exchange rate and cut loan service costs for the over-indebted public sector, he said.
Public finances were hard hit by a decade of state capture. A full house of junk credit ratings and rising government debt after a R254bn relief package for power utility Eskom were adding to the strain.
CHALLENGES
Meanwhile, severe power rationing because of Eskom’s inability to meet demand and logistics network constraints are eroding SA’s economic growth prospects, disrupting local supply chains and stoking inflation.
That is spurring investors to place a premium on the domestic currency. The rand has weakened more than 7% against the dollar in 2023, making it the second-worst performer in a basket of 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
The Bank’s approach to pursuing better inflation outcomes that included highlighting constraints that lie outside the scope of monetary policy has not won it many friends, “but has helped to foster a better public discussion about the challenges holding back our economy”, Kganyago said.
His renewed call to lower the inflation target will probably be met with criticism by detractors of the central bank, including some politicians and labour groups who have said it should do more to support South Africans and the economy.
In January, ANC chair Gwede Mantashe said the party agreed to change the central bank’s mandate to include job creation, a prospect that rattled investors worried that modifications would weaken the Bank’s independence and commitment to its inflation target. President Cyril Ramaphosa later downplayed suggestions that the change was imminent, while finance minister Enoch Godongwana said an explicit mention of jobs in the Bank’s remit would not affect its operations.
The Bank has lifted the key interest rate by 425 basis points (bps) since November 2021 in an attempt to tackle the worst global inflation shock in a generation. At 7%, it remains above the 4.5% midpoint of the target range at which policymakers prefer to anchor inflation expectations, though it’s “off the highs of a few months ago and compares favourably” to SA’s emerging market peers, Kganyago said.
Average price growth expectations for 2023 rose to 6.3% in the first quarter from 6.1% previously, according to a survey of businesspeople, labour unions and households conducted by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER). That prompted the Bank to lift borrowing costs by a bigger-than-expected 50 bps on March 30, when it raised its inflation forecast to 6% from 5.4%.