EDITORIAL: Prescribed assets — a recipe for disaster
Pension funds would be forced to put a certain amount of your savings into government-approved instruments — like a bond to finance Eskom, or SAA
Just when there’s much-needed clarity on land expropriation, the ANC hurls another ill-advised spanner into the works. This time it stemmed from the ANC’s policy manifesto last weekend, which raised the spectre of "prescribed assets" in unsettlingly specific language. In a nutshell, pension funds would be forced to put a certain amount of your savings into government-approved instruments — like a bond to finance Eskom, or SAA.The spectre of prescribed assets has loomed for years. In 2017, the ANC said such an intervention should be considered to force funds to invest in infrastructure, skills development and job creation.But this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke crisply of how the ANC will investigate the introduction of prescribed assets to unlock resources for investment in social development.The goal, he said, is to "mobilise funds within a regulatory framework for socially productive investments (including housing, infrastructure for social and economic development and town...
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