Send us a sign that the government is serious about SA’s growth crisis

The leaders of some of SA’s top companies met President Cyril Ramaphosa this week and urged him to act now to kick-start our ailing economy. The president is clearly listening, but will he act? The cost of inaction is rising daily as the economy languishes. This is the longest downturn on record. SA’s economy has been growing at a slower pace than its population for some time now, so living standards are falling all round. That trend is not expected to reverse any time soon, and without growth, there is little prospect of cutting the unemployment rate of almost 30%.

Meanwhile, business confidence has sunk to levels last seen at the end of the apartheid era. The private sector is holding up what little investment there is — latest Reserve Bank figures show private sector investment has been positive over the past year or two while public sector investment has crashed — but this is not remotely at the levels needed to spark growth and lift job creation.

As long as businesses can’t see what the future holds, they understandably are not going to take the risk of committing to the kinds of solid, long-term investment projects that would change SA’s low-growth, low-job-creation trend. As long as they remain concerned about whether the government will address Eskom’s spiralling debt and severe operational problems, that’s not going to happen.

Nor are investors, local or foreign, going to commit when it’s not clear how the government is going to tackle the soaring public debt putting SA’s credit rating at risk. There continues to be little sign of action on the promises Ramaphosa has long made to sort out broadband spectrum, red tape, visa rules and the rest.

And though the president has made some good appointments — notably at the South African Revenue

Service and National Prosecuting Authority — it’s still the case that almost none of the state-owned enterprises,

Eskom included, has a permanent CEO.

The past couple of weeks have added to the sense of paralysis at the top. The long-promised paper on Eskom, scheduled for mid-September, has yet to go to the cabinet, though Ramaphosa told business leaders this week it would do so before the medium-term budget on

October 30. The medium-term budget itself has been delayed by a week, ostensibly because Ramaphosa has to hang out instead with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-Africa summit.

At least the news that Ramaphosa has finally appointed the Presidential Economic Advisory Council he first promised in his first state of the nation address in February 2018 is welcome, as is the impressive list of leading thinkers he has brought together.

But the time it has taken is yet another instance of the snail’s pace at which delivery, even on relatively uncontroversial promises, is happening. And if the president thinks that another committee is a solution to SA’s urgent economic problems, he is deluded.

We already have a plethora of task teams and committees advising on Eskom and other challenges. We’re not short of ideas — we just can’t seem to implement them.

Unless the government sets deadlines for committees, decides speedily and transparently on their recommendations and then implements them, the committees and councils and task teams end up serving only as delaying tactics to avoid decisions.

Not that it’s easy. Ramaphosa is trying to manage deep divisions in his party and his government over what to do about the economy and about Eskom. Business leaders need to understand the complexities of the politics, just as politicians need to understand business. There are not going to be quick fixes. That’s especially so given the sad lack of capacity and skill in the public sector. But we need at least some signals that Ramaphosa and his team are making key decisions and that they are on course to deliver on their promises to implement growth-boosting measures. Business leaders have offered to help. The president would do well to take advantage of this.

We’re not short of ideas — we just can’t seem to implement them