As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast a further knock in the country’s unemployment rate, ActionSA has indicated that they already had a plan to return R1 trillion in investments back to South Africa’s shores.
According to the international body, February saw South Africa’s employment rate dropping by 22 000 in the last quarter of 2023, rocketing the country’s already worrying unemployment rate by 0.2% and bringing it to 32.1%.
In real figures, this represents a total of 7.9 million people being unemployed.
Pieter Scribante, a member of ActionSA’s economic development team, said it was for this reason that the party was concerned by reports indicating that foreign investors had disinvested more than R1 trillion from South Africa over the past decade.
Scribante said it was evident that South Africa’s investor environment and businesses had continued to suffer due to the ANC’s economic policies, corruption, cronyism, and gross government incompetence.
This had, according to him, significantly hindered the country’s capacity to create jobs and grow the economy as desperately needed.
With economic growth averaging 0.76% between 2014 to 2023, and the population burgeoning to 1.15% per annum during the same period, Scribante said the reality was that South Africa was poorer now than it had been during 2014.
“During this lost decade, foreign companies left South Africa, choosing to invest and create jobs in other African countries, like Egypt, Kenya, and Ghana. It is imperative for South Africa to grow the economy to alleviate the country’s unemployment crisis. We must make South Africa more competitive and bring back foreign investments to jump-start the economy and spur job creation.”
Given the opportunity to lead the government, ActionSA would, according to the party member, through its four pillars create a business-friendly, competitive economy, which would attract international investments and jobs.
They claimed that this would in turn enable the country to use investments to prioritise strategic and job-creating industries, such as manufacturing, and increase South Africa’s international competitiveness.
“Employment is our main priority and by ensuring a vibrant private sector functioning in a market-based economy, innovative entrepreneurship and small businesses, which create jobs and propel the economy, reduced political interference and power of trade union, and stable and reliable ActionSA government in power, we can turn things around for our people,” Scribante added.
The Star
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