BRONWYN NORTJE: National Development Plan can’t get country out of predicament
Although laudable, the NDP has growth objectives that were simply never attainable
As tempting as it is to sing from the rooftops that "the technical recession is over!" it would also be extremely misleading. Yes, we did have 2.5% growth in the second quarter, but when you look at the bigger picture, the underlying trend in South African GDP has been overwhelmingly negative since 2011. Perhaps more importantly, the average growth rate over this period is well below 2% — nowhere near the rate that is required for SA to reach the targets of the National Development Plan (NDP). All of this makes me wonder whether it is time for the NDP to shuffle off to the same place where other growth strategies such as Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) and AsgiSA (The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA) have gone to gather dust.The main reason being that as things currently stand, SA is about as likely to achieve the policy objectives of the NDP as Bafana Bafana are of winning the World Cup. Since the NDP first burst onto the scene, analysts and others (mys...
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