0.4% economic growth woefully inadequate to address unemployment crisis

3 September 2024

The 0.4% growth in our economy in the second quarter of 2024 is woefully inadequate to address the rising unemployment and entrenched poverty in South Africa. 

The country needs to achieve at least 5% economic growth per annum, over a sustained period of time, in order to meaningfully increase employment opportunities and to lift people, especially young people, out of poverty.

The slow economic growth – despite the absence of electricity load-shedding during this quarter – is deeply worrying.

In 2019, National Treasury released a proposed Economic Strategy for South Africa which highlighted the need for government to implement a series of growth reforms that promote economic transformation, support labour-intensive growth, and create a globally competitive economy.

National Treasury identified that the country needed to focus on five fundamental building blocks of sustainable long-run growth and identified a series of detailed reforms to raise potential growth. These included prioritising labour-intensive growth in sectors such as agriculture and services, including tourism; and implementing focused and flexible industrial and trade policy.

The Government of National Unity will have to urgently decide which economic growth plan it will pursue, and implement it if we are to meet the demands for economic growth and reduced unemployment.

In the meantime, while our economy continues to languish and is unable to generate job opportunities for millions of adult South Africans, we have no choice but to meet the constitutional right to social security.

Our GNU must implement comprehensive basic income that will enable those who are eager and able to work, but for whom we are unable to provide jobs, the ability to meet their most basic needs, including access to food.

The current crisis of low economic growth, high unemployment and extreme poverty is not justifiable or sustainable. This is while the R370 per month SRD-grant is insufficient and the application process is designed to reject applicants rather than make it accessible to those who need it.

Issued by Brett Herron, Secretary General, GOOD, 3 September 2024