HILARY JOFFE: Changing Reserve Bank mandate won't solve SA's economic ills
The Zondo and Nugent commissions of inquiry are revealing in lurid detail how the integrity and effectiveness of some of SA's key institutions were eroded by state capture — and the cost in terms of lost economic growth is only now becoming clear. The danger is that even those institutions that have stayed strong could see their effectiveness and credibility undermined because in a very weak and dysfunctional economy they are being looked at to deliver way more than what they were designed for. That's arguably the case in relation to SA's competition authorities. Far-reaching new amendments to the competition legislation are attempting to task them with changing the structure of markets to bring in new firms and create new jobs - in effect trying to make them instruments of industrial policy rather than, primarily, competition regulators. It is even more obviously the case in relation to the Reserve Bank. The nationalisation issue has gone relatively quiet and at least some of its p...
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