EDITORIAL: Ramaphosa’s 2-trillion empty investment promises

  • 📰 FinancialMail
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 58 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 26%
  • Publisher: 63%

Philippines News News

If so much cash is really flushing around the system, how come the economy is in such a dire state?

President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks during the South Africa Investment Conference in Joburg on Thursday April 13 2023. Picture: BLOOMBERG/WALDO SWIEGERS

President Cyril Ramaphosa crows that his government has raised R1.5-trillion in investment in the past five years, exceeding his initial R1.2-trillion target by plenty. But if that’s really happened, where exactly is this money? If all this cash is flushing around the system, how come unemployment is rising, the country’s economic capital is slowly becoming one gaping pothole, and the economy is projected to stutter to little more than 0% growth this year?

Part of the answer is that these were simply pledges — the sort of substance-free, feel-good champagne talk the ANC specialises in. Talk is that less than R400m of this actually resulted in tangible investments. , those targets were just colourful theatrics. Essentially, that R1.2-trillion over five years meant Ramaphosa was looking for fixed capital formation of just R240bn a year — less than 5% of our GDP, and far less than many other countries are getting.

Yet Ramaphosa is undaunted, and has now shifted the target to R2-trillion. Why not — if this is all Monopoly money anyway, why not make it R10-trillion or R20-trillion? Who’s auditing this, anyway?

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 20. in PH

Philippines Philippines Latest News, Philippines Philippines Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Southern Africa: SA, Namibia Resolve to Deepen Trade and InvestmentPresident Cyril Ramaphosa says Namibia and South Africa will deepen trade and investment ties with a Bi-National Commission (BNC) expected to be held between the countries later this year.
Source: allafrica - 🏆 1. / 99 Read more »