Ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week, finance minister Tito Mboweni said he was confident that the government delegation attending would present a strong investment case for SA. And he should be. At the highest levels, our government has become really good at telling a good story. Successive ministers — even the good guys who might not have actually believed it — have been doing this for years.

The problem has never been the telling of a good story. Rather, it’s the lack of a credible plan that international investors have seen right through. In fact, I am rather surprised that we have been able to keep the likes of Moody’s at bay for so long. Growth forecasts from the Treasury and the SA Reserve Bank have consistently been too optimistic. When an already low 1.4% Reserve Bank forecast for 2020 is cut to 1.2% not even a month into the year, there is clearly trouble...

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