President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday that while the country’s economy takes time to recover and while the reform programme is implemented, government will continue to pursue a range of complementary interventions to support job creation.

He said there were indications that the country’s economy was showing encouraging signs of recovery, and he cited the latest employment figures, which he said provided “cautious hope”.

South Africa saw a decline in the unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2022. According to Statistics South Africa, 15.5-million people were employed in the second quarter of 2022, up from 15.4-million in the fourth quarter of 2021.

New jobs were created in trade, finance, construction and community and social services.

Ramaphosa promised that government would expand public employment and ensure social protection for the most vulnerable, alongside measures that supported private sector growth.

“The growth in employment, together with other promising signs of recovery, should encourage us to push ahead with the reforms and implement our Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan to unlock investment and growth. It should encourage all social partners to work more closely and with greater urgency and purpose to achieve faster growth and create more jobs,” he said.

He pointed that over the last few years, South Africans have had to contend with slow growth and rising unemployment. This has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 July unrest, and severe flooding in parts of the country. 

He acknowledged that much more needed to be done if government was to make a significant dent in the country’s high unemployment rate. 

He said the energy crisis had also damaged the economy, as well as households and businesses.

He pointed out government’s plan to remove the licensing threshold for electricity generation facilities, as well as policy reform in energy.

Ramaphosa said the structural reform process was progressing in economic growth and new investment.

He said while structural reforms were difficult, they were necessary to improve the business and investment climate.

For it to be successful, Ramaphosa stressed government’s role in reaching consensus between business, labour and civil society not only on the reforms, but on trade-offs. 

“Yet, even amidst these formidable challenges, our society and economy has proven to be resilient. And indications are that our economy is showing encouraging signs of recovery,” he said.

Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso said Ramaphosa’s outlined plans have given her confidence that government is following through on its promises and that it was fixing the key issues that frustrated business’s efforts to grow the economy.

She said Ramaphosa clearly proclaimed that now was the time for implementation, not talk.

“He noted that business and government won’t and shouldn’t always agree. But it was clear that there are many areas that we can work together on to deliver, and his speech motivated all of us in organised business to push on with our efforts to support government to deliver,” she said.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND INVESTMENT

With infrastructure development and investment being one of the key priorities of the country’s recovery plan, Ramaphosa said he was encouraged by the growth in construction jobs.

The February budget outlined R812-billion for public infrastructure over the next three years. A 30% increase from the R627-billion for the past three years. 

The Construction Industry Development Board recently noted that there had been an increase in infrastructure projects driven by State-owned enterprises such as Transnet and Eskom, but also in the metros and through the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure.