2005-11-20,+Staff+Wanted+signs+may+mean+turnaround,+Crotty,+Brep

= Staff Wanted signs may mean the start of the turnaround =


 * October 19, 2005

By Ann Crotty**

It was the most amazing sight. I hadn't seen anything like it for years in this country. I did recall the same sense of confusion and amazement when I'd spotted a similar sight on one of the streets of Dublin back in early 1994.

It was almost unbelievable, except it was right there in front of me. Two separate notices with similar messages: "Staff wanted - apply within". And it was smack in the middle of Melville, one of Johannesburg's trendy suburbs.

Of course, not even two swallows make a summer and there will be many people who are ready to remind me of the tens of thousands of jobs that have been lost in sectors such as mining and textiles this year alone. And they would be absolutely right in pointing out that the unemployment situation in the country is appalling.

But it might just be that things are turning, or perhaps are beginning to turn. Or if that seems too aggressively optimistic, perhaps they're beginning to begin to turn.

Could it be that after 11 years of pretty much playing it by an economics rule book that might have been written by the International Monetary Fund, the people of South Africa are finally set to reap the rewards?

Although it has to be said that the growth rates we have achieved in the recent past reflect a substantially stronger performance than achieved in previous decades, sadly the benefits from this growth have been limited to a relatively small section of the population.

But could it be that, having managed to sustain the strongest period of growth for decades, government policy now has a chance of nudging economic growth towards the alluring 6 percent figure? Six percent is a rate of growth that just might bring reasonable employment opportunities in its wake.

Of course, one of the major problems with economic policy is the considerable time that lapses between implementing a particular policy or set of policies and seeing any results.

The fact that this lapse can run to several years means that in many instances it is heroic in the extreme to assume that a particular set of policies resulted in a particular level or type of economic activity during a particular period.

It is relatively easy to make big and bold statements about cause and effect over the long term, but pinning anything down to a specific explanation can usually not be done reliably within a short period.

The fact that Ireland's dramatic surge in economic growth from 1994 was often referred to as "miraculous" is evidence of the lack of scientific precision in economics, or at least in economics as it applies to the real world.

For the better part of 10 years economists and politicians in Ireland grappled to find an explanation for the dramatic change in fortune that the country was experiencing.

Initially, they latched on to the nearest and most obvious explanation, which in Ireland's case was the social partnership agreement. It was many years before a fuller and more credible explanation emerged.

All of which suggests that it is extremely difficult for government to determine which of the many policies available it should pursue to push economic growth up a few notches and ensure that the Staff Wanted signs are not brief aberrations from a sad norm.

Certainly, the one thing the government will want to ensure from here on is that the benefits from whatever growth is achieved are spread more widely than they have been to date. One way of ensuring that is through jobs.

Indeed it seems pointless to notch up impressive growth rates if all that means is that corporate executives and shareholders continue to score big time - as well as the lucky few who belong to the black empowerment coterie. What is the point of economic growth if it is not to improve the lot of at least the majority of the population?

Which brings me to last week's other two fascinating developments, apart from spotting the Staff Wanted signs: the cabinet's approval of a report from the "6 percent task team" and Jacob Zuma's first court appearance.

Those of a conspiratorial inclination might be wondering, was it pure coincidence that the cabinet approved the report, amid much fanfare, just two days after Zuma's court appearance?

The behaviour of Zuma's populist support group should leave none of us in any doubt that we no longer have the luxury of growing the economy just to enrich the lucky few.

We can no longer afford to wait for the trickle-down effect to start trickling. The present government has just a few short years to nurture an environment in which Staff Wanted signs flourish. And business should do everything it can to help.

Because last Tuesday we all got an indication of what the alternative economic policies might look like after 2009.

From: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2952380&fSectionId=560&fSetId=662