Democratic Alliance finance spokesman David Maynier on Tuesday said economic policy failures were in part to blame for the International Monetary Fund’s drastically revised growth forecast for South Africa.
He said there was now more pressure on President Jacob Zuma to deal with this in his state of the nation address next month and to announce new measures to stimulate growth and create jobs.
“The fact that the IMF have revised South Africa’s economic growth rate down to 0.7 percent is – in part – due to a failure of economic policy: structural constraints on economic growth and job creation including policy uncertainty, electricity shortages, and labour market reform remain,” Maynier said.
“As the economy tanks all eyes are on whether President Jacob Zuma will announce new measures to boost economic growth and job creation during his state of the nation address on 11 February 2016 in Parliament.”
The IMF’s World Economic Outlook has revised South Africa’s forecast growth rate for this year from 1.3 percent to 0.7 percent — a percentage point lower than National Treasury’s forecast for 2016.