Policy planning in SA is questioned
SOUTH Africa’s Statistician-General Pali Lehohla has taken a side-swipe at the quality of policy planning in the country.
“As the Statistician-General who produces these numbers (data), I’m terribly disappointed at the level at which data is used in planning when it’s so abundant.
“We need a better form of engagement in terms of the data that is produced in order to have better, high quality planning that can be tracked and deliver results. I don’t think we are reaching that stage as yet and that stage is crucial,” he said yesterday.
Lehohla said the amount of data that was available did not add up to the quality of plans that come out of the country’s systems. He added that people looked at the headline number for the gross domestic product (GDP) but that was all they looked at and not at the sec- tors that Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) produced for the GDP and then link it up with other data.
Joe de Beer, the deputy director-general economic statistics at Stats SA, said the relevance of these surveys was that they provided a lot of detailed information that was not as timely as some of Stats SA’s other surveys.
The construction survey revealed that the total income of the industry increased by 13.4 percent a year to R392.3 billion in 2014 from R269bn in 2011, with large increases registered for construction of civil and engineering structures (+R46.8bn), construction of buildings (+R26.6bn) and other building completion (+R11.8bn).
The contribution of the top 100 enterprises in the construction industry increased to 40 percent in 2014 from 34.8 percent in 2004. A total of 502 000 people were employ- ment in the industry at endJune 2014.
Large enterprises contributed only 37.3 percent of employment while small, medium and micro enterprises creased 62.7 percent of the People looked at the headline number for the gross domestic product, but that was all they looked at. employment. The total income of the manufacturing industry increased by 9.4 percent a year to R2.20 trillion in 2014 from R1.68trln in 2011.
Large increases were reported between 2011 and 2014 for coke, petroleum, chemical products, rubber and plastics (+R81.3bn), food products and beverages (+R88.6bn) and trans- port equipment (+R81.3bn).
The contribution of the top 100 manufacturing enterprises rose to 58.1 percent in 2014 from 53.5 percent in 2005.
A total of 246 000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing industry between 2005 and 2014. The biggest loss in employment was the 91 000 jobs lost in the textiles, clothing, leather and footwear sector, followed by food products and beverages (-52 000), metals, metal products, machinery and equipment (-35 000), furniture, other manufacturing and recycling (-32 000) and transport equipment (-30 000).
Jobs were only gained in the coke, petroleum, chemical products, rubber and plastics sector, where 20 000 jobs were added.
Large enterprises contributed only 46.4 percent of employment in the manufacturing industry, with small, medium and micro enterprises creating 53.6 percent of the jobs in the industry.