A mountain to climb
Cyril’s next steps
If President Cyril Ramaphosa can’t overcome SA’s political and capacity constraints, the country won’t grow fast enough to achieve fiscal and social sustainability and prevent further ratings downgrades
With Cyril Ramaphosa ensconced in the presidency for the next five years, the economy on the skids and unemployment on the rise, he might be tempted to conclude that his priority should be to draft a clever economic plan to get growth going. But while the overwhelming consensus is that restoring growth should be the new government’s top priority, few economists believe that spending months wrangling over policy formulation is what SA needs right now. "It would be a negative if another growth-plan formation process was announced," says Peter Attard Montalto, head of capital markets research for Intellidex. "This would show that Ramaphosa has not learnt that all the answers and policy are already under his nose and that implementation now is all that matters." Nazmeera Moola, Investec Asset Management’s deputy MD and head of investments, also doesn’t think SA needs to draft a new economic plan in the short term, arguing that "there is enough low-hanging fruit to work with for now". Ra...
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