President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed a Joint Sitting of Parliament on South Africa's Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan.


By Phumzile Mavimbela

 
 Honourable President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed a Joint Sitting of Parliament on South Africa's Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan on Thursday. In his opening Ramaphosa qiuckly highlighted that different from the State of the Nation Address, where he addressed the broad programme the purpose of this address was solely to focus on the extraordinary measures the government must take to restore the country's  economy to inclusive growth following the devastation caused by COVID-19 to people’s lives and to the  country’s economy.

The interventions outlined in this plan are to :

- To create jobs, primarily through aggressive infrastructure investment and mass employment programmes;
- To reindustrialise our economy, focusing on growing small businesses;
- To accelerate economic reforms to unlock investment and growth;
- To fight crime and corruption; and,
- To improve the capability of the state.

Through the special COVID-19 grants and the top-up of existing grants, close to R40 billion in additional support has been provided directly to more than 17 million people from poor households. 

The President stated that these aimed at rebuilding the the countries economy is founded on the premise of vision 2030 of the National Development Plan and the programme that was outlined at the beginning of the 6th democratic administration, where we set out the key priorities to drive change and transformation in our country. 
 

  The interventions outlined in this plan will:


- achieve sufficient, secure and reliable energy supply within two years;
- create and support over 800,000 work opportunities in the immediate term to respond to job losses;
- unlock more than R1 trillion in infrastructure investment over the next 4 years;
- reduce data costs for every South African and expand broadband access to low-income households;
- reverse the decline of the local manufacturing sector and promote reindustrialisation through deeper levels of localisation and exports;
- resuscitate vulnerable sectors such as tourism, which have been hard hit by the pandemic. 
 
The President also touched on crime and Covid related corruption he stated that they are working to clamp down on the illegal economy and illicit financial flows, including transfer pricing abuse, profit shifting, VAT and customs duty fraud, under-invoicing of manufactured imports, corruption and other illegal schemes. 

" The decisive action we have taken to prevent, detect and act against COVID-related corruption will strengthen the broader fight against crime." 

Ramaphosa further mentioned that The Special Investigating Unit has made significant progress in probing allegations of criminal conduct in all public entities during the national state of disaster. 

Opposition party  and critics have pointed out grey areas in the President's plan saying its promising, however it sounds ambitious and  almost unrealistic because the president has failed to highlight a clear plan of action as to how he will implement the objectives in the plan he has drawn up.

Click here to access the full speech

 

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Cyril Ramaphosa

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Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan

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