HILARY JOFFE: Still no open markets for electricity and transport
The transport people have been tardy about legislating open markets, and the electricity folk even more so
The latest consensus forecasts make bleak reading. Growth of 2% this year is a little better than economists had expected a couple of months ago, but that’s mainly because 2021 was a little worse. And over the next couple of years the economy is expected to slide back into the 1% range, with the 2-million jobs lost over the past two years not expected to come back soon.
What about those structural reforms, you might ask? The ones President Cyril Ramaphosa designated as the priorities of his October 2020 economic reconstruction plan? Even if they were implemented tomorrow, they’d take three to five years to have a meaningful impact on growth and employment — which is why the forecasters can’t factor them into the outlook. But the fact is they are not being implemented tomorrow, or even next week...
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