Economists not excited by ANC’s 10-point economic action plan

Economists are not excited by the ANC’s 10-point economic plan, saying they wonder about another war room run by the same hopeless people with no plans and no focused attention.  

President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled the ANC’s 10-point economic action plan at the conclusion of a special meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on Monday. The plan identifies 10 priority interventions to accelerate economic growth and is expected to be presented to Cabinet in due course.

The 10 priority interventions Ramaphosa said the ANC identified to “ignite growth in our economy” are:

• Using electricity tariffs and investment in transmission infrastructure to drive economic activity
• Accelerating the recovery of South Africa’s freight and logistics sector
• Rebuilding the chrome and manganese industries
• Improving the capacity of the state to manage major projects
• Driving local economic development and investment in local infrastructure
• Scaling up labour activation initiatives, as well as public employment
• Expanding small business support and investment by development finance institutions
• Enabling the growth of provincial economies outside the main economic centres
• Accelerating the diversification of South Africa’s trade partners, strengthening participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and addressing the impact of tariff and non-tariff barriers and
• Ensuring effective budget and macroeconomic coordination.

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10-point economic action plan, but run by the same people with no actual plan

Professor Jannie Rossouw, visiting professor at the Wits Business School, is not impressed with the plan, saying it firstly seems that the ANC has forgotten they are not running the country on their own anymore, but must include the government of national unity (GNU) in decisions.

“I also wonder a bout the war room. It seems that they are centralising everything in the office of the president. It should rather be in the department of trade, industry and competition or National Treasury.”

Rossouw says the programme will still be run by the same hopeless people. “The priority interventions also do not include any plans to execute them. Ten priorities are also too much.. They should choose three things and make that work to show they can do it. You need focused attention here.”

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Ramaphosa unveiled economic action plan himself, but did not answer questions

Louw Nel, senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa, says Ramaphosa added weight to the plan by unveiling it himself, but he fielded no questions at the end of the briefing, much to journalists’ exasperation.

“He prefaced the plan by saying the country had made significant progress in key areas like electricity generation and the logistics sector, ‘including steady recovery in Transnet’s performance’. Ramaphosa also made it clear that the ANC remained committed to broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) ‘to ensure that we correct the injustices of our past and end the inequality of the present moment’.

“He said the NEC had resolved to establish an ‘economic war room’, predictably located in the Presidency, designed to “coordinate cross-government performance, monitoring and publish regular scorecards on progress”.”

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Many of economic action plan interventions sound familiar

Nel points out that it is not clear how this would be different from the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, which was first created by former president Jacob Zuma in 2010 and is already located in the Presidency.

He says many of these interventions sounded familiar and are very much designed to accelerate already existing initiatives, including the Transmission Development Plan (rolled out in 2020), Presidential Employment Stimulus (launched in 2020) and the District Development Model (introduced in 2019).

Nonetheless, some details caught the eye, he says. “Acknowledging the new realities presented by the GNU and no doubt recalling the months-long impasse over the 2025 Budget, Ramaphosa said ‘we will develop a sustainable budget negotiation strategy in the context of the GNU’.”

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Not much excitement about economic action plan

Nel also noticed that the president made it clear that South Africa must be proactive in response to global developments and trade dynamics, calling for an emergency industrial support package, expanding exports under the AfCFTA and exports to Brics countries and other markets ‘where we will be paying visits in due course’.

Ramaphosa is due to visit Ireland and Belgium this week, with his deputy, Paul Mashatile, heading to Senegal and South Sudan.

Nel points out that Ramaphosa unveiled the ANC’s new economic intervention plan to much fanfare, but it did not generate enormous excitement. “This is perhaps because so much of the plan traverses familiar terrain.”

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Good to remember GNU for budgeting in economic action plan, but what is cannabis doing there?

“Some of the details are notable, such as the acknowledgement that the GNU needs to find a better way to deal with disagreements on the budget to avoid a repeat of this year’s events. Under the mention of labour absorptive sectors, Ramaphosa included the cannabis industry, a curious inclusion if you consider that his health ministry issued a ban on the sale, production and import of food products containing cannabis in early 2025, only to withdraw the directive following backlash.”

Nel says policy coherence would have been a worthwhile eleventh intervention. The GNU’s second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), responded to the plan by zoning in on BEE, saying the ANC must “drop race-based policies that undermine growth and jobs”.