Business needs to come to the party in making South Africa's economy work, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Friday.

“Unless South Africans can get their act together, including labour, business and civil society... if we can't have a single vision of where we want to be in ten to 20 years time... then we're losing an opportunity to place South Africa firmly on the map,” he told a business breakfast in Johannesburg.

He called on business to participate in the conversation about what kind of economy they want and South Africa needs.

The country needed sustainable growth of seven percent a year for 20 years, he emphasised.

“Discourse in South Africa is always about what our... political leaders are doing.

“Is it not time, for each of the sectors and their leadership to actually say, 'what is it that I can do?'

“How am I willing... to demonstrate commitment and sacrifice?

“Why can't the business sector set the example in thinking about growth, jobs... ?”

Gordhan presented his budget to Parliament on Wednesday with a heavy focus on job creation.

“How do we get the energy, the competitive spirit... that you have in private sector [to apply to economic growth]?” he asked.

Gordhan referred to US President Barack Obama's 2011 goals for the US to out-educate, out-innovate and out-compete the world in order to create jobs and a competitive country.

“I like these phrases,” said Gordhan, “What is the growth path we need to follow... which will move us in that particular direction?”

South Africans would have to do “extraordinary things” to achieve this as it was ordinary things that kept the country at low growth and high unemployment.

The challenge of getting South Africa's economy to grow faster needed a change in thinking as no-one appeared to have found the “magic bullet” to how every country in the world could grow at seven percent for 20 years.

It must be something “extraordinary” and “creative” that needed to be done to achieve this.

An over-focus on macro-economic policies deprived South Africans of thinking creatively about the issues.

“We need a formula that certainly provides macro-economic stability... but tackles issues on micro-economic reform.”