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=**Asgisa is not a plan — it’s a public relations job**=

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 19 February 2006

 * by Itumeleng Mahabane**

I AM puzzled. If it is likely that the economy grew at 5.5% to 6% last year, then why is our major ambition to ensure average growth of 6% by 2010? Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) makes little sense if its target is in touching range.

The deputy president has not outlined anything that would fundamentally enhance SA’s present macroeconomic performance. The fact is that Asgisa’s job is nearly done and the idea that it will bring a step-up in the country’s economic and social development is a sham and a ruse that must rank as one of the most outrageous pieces of propaganda in this government’s history.

Asgisa is a cobbling together of a range of disconnected projects that were already in the pipeline, packaged with platitudes and empty themes. Any mid-level government policy-and-research analyst could have pulled it together in a matter of weeks. That the deputy president, with the resources at her disposal, gave us this wishy-washy piece of rubbish is an insult.

The economy is doing well — actually, brilliantly. The economic boom promises to sustain the few hundred thousand people who live like upper middle-class Westerners. It will also sustain the couple of million more moving into the middle class. But the painful truth is that a 6% growth rate will do very little more than that — oh yes, it will also allow us to continue to provide those crucial but economically unproductive social grants.

Is the ideal South Africa really one in which more than 20% of working South Africans earn less than R1000 a month and more than 50% earn less than R5000 a month?

Is it one in which more than 35% of working-age South Africans are unemployed? Six percent economic growth was never enough but it was an important psychological target. Real delivery demands more and if we are nearly at 6%, we demand that we be given ideas about how more can be achieved.

I don’t want to deny the government the credit that it’s due. Creating an economy that is growing at well above 4%, seemingly without the dangers of boom-and-bust cycles, is no mean feat.

Many of those who were sceptical about some of the government’s past policies have been proved wrong to some extent. And though some of us still believe that certain alternative policy choices would have delivered slightly faster growth, they might have done so without the assurances we now have, such as the knowledge that we can actually sustain the massive social spending the government is undertaking.

Still, Asgisa is something of a betrayal because it smacks of taking your foot off the brake. It smacks of patting yourself on the back when your job has barely begun. Governments are not allowed that luxury.

Worst of all is the dishonesty of suggesting a new push to help the poor when nothing of the sort is happening. What the deputy president showed us cannot be all this government is capable of. If it is, we’re the poorer for lack of choice.

If the government thinks its economic plans are working fine, and if it believes there’s not much more it can do, it should tell us that.

True, the deputy president has been at pains to say that Asgisa is not a new blueprint for economic growth. But, though we might not need an economic plan, we do need a development plan. It must be driven by a government department with clout and an adequate capacity for oversight.

Clout and oversight were what we thought the deputy president was going to provide. It should not be the Treasury that comes up with a strategy for ensuring that departments and provinces spend their budgets. It should be an office such as that of the deputy president, an office that can ensure that our policies and projects, from health to education, are part of the development agenda.

We need to know, for example, how we are going to stop the tragic waste of our education budget.

Because we’re a growing economy and will have huge infrastructural and human resources needs for the next few decades, I would rather see more detail about what we’re doing to revive technical colleges and apprenticeship schemes instead of hearing about a much-touted provincial dam project.

Apparently, we’re going to promote business process outsourcing. Great. But in which sector of this broad industry do we think we have a competitive advantage? How, exactly, are we going to position South Africa to attract 100000 jobs over the next four years?

Asgisa is not a plan, it’s a PR job.

Let’s hope that after the elections the government begins real work on a real, integrated development plan that draws better management performance, increased productivity and more innovation from the public sector, and that it combines this with better co-operation and co-ordination with the private sector.


 * **Mahabane is a communications and investor relations consultant**


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article-business.aspx?ID=ST6A167497**