Small business is key to SA growth

THE second iteration of The Insiders, a wide-ranging discussion forum staged by Time magazine and Sanlam’s Glacier, was held at the JSE on Thursday evening.

The panel — made up of Public Investment Corporation CEO Elias Masilela, Cannon Asset Managers chief investment officer Adrian Saville and ex-DA leader Tony Leon — discussed South Africa’s economy, international competitiveness and joblessness.

Issues on which all three panellists could agree included the flawed balance sheet South Africa inherited from the disgrace of apartheid, and the need to acknowledge the past while taking ownership of the future.

In short, the government cannot do it alone.

“Everyone agrees with the diagnostic report contained in the National Development Plan (NDP). But we can’t rely on the state — it is every person’s duty to grow the economy,” said Masilela.

“We’re better off than we were 20 years ago, but what we have inherited, such as the education problem, remains. We’ve made big strides, but not in the recent past,” Saville agreed.

Therein lies the problem: South Africa has policy. Reams of policy. If policy were a competitive advantage, we’d have the biggest economy in the world. While we’re producing enough policy documents to deforest Mpumalanga, the panellists acknowledged the need to stop talking and start doing.

“The NDP is not a new policy. It’s the result of testing many previous policies. Now we know the problems and must find solutions and implement those policies. The NDP is an amalgam of all debates,” said Masilela.

The well-known problems, he said, are education, intellectual capacity, insufficient investment, profits leaving the country and service delivery.

Saville added a shortage of affordable bandwidth to that list.

“The NDP is policy, not reality. We’re world class at proposals and policy,” said Saville .

He argued that South Africa tends to have jobless growth, essentially becoming more productive with the same resources.

“The missing ingredient is companies — they create growth and we need more small companies. ”

Our small businesses need to start making things, not just resell them, Saville said.