Organised business revealed on Wednesday that South Africa’s social partners were moving ahead with talks designed to secure sufficient consensus on ways to begin implementing government’s New Growth Path (NGP), which aims to raise growth levels and create five-million jobs by 2020.

Addressing the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa’s yearly conference in Johannesburg, Business Unity South Africa deputy CEO Raymond Parsons said the immediate priorities for the private sector related to the NGP’s focus on overcoming the prevailing skills deficit, improving basic education, increasing local procurement, stimulating small business development and galvanising the so-called green economy.

Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel’s ‘leadership group’ was also concentrating on areas of policy, particularly microeconomic policy reform, that should be implemented in order to support prospects for growth, employment and poverty alleviation.

“Of course, there will be aspects of the NGP with which business or other stakeholders will strongly disagree . . . There will be ‘trade-offs’ and conflicts,” Parsons said. But he argued that the NGP should not be seen as a rigid blueprint, but rather as a possible springboard.

There was general recognition that, while growth alone was insufficient to ensure job creation, economic expansion remained critical to employment generation and transformation.

Should South Africa “get it right” and the economy expanded by 6% a year sustainably, the economy would double in size every 12 years.

In other words, the country’s gross domestic product, which currently stands at $280-billion, or a nominal $5 600 per citizen, would rise to $560-billion by 2022, or $10 204 a person. “A 6% annual growth rate sustained over a period of two and a half decades would make South Africa a trillion-dollar economy.”

A higher economic growth rate would also require more people to be employed to achieve yet higher levels of economic growth and the greater the economic value created, and individuals employed, the higher the living standards and the lower levels of unemployment and poverty.

Parsons noted that 11 developing economies had been able to sustained growth rates of 7%, or higher, in the period following the Second World War. They comprised Botswana, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Malta, Oman, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

South Africa, by contrast, remained a low-growth performer, which, given current constraints, many economist still believe would struggle to breach the 4% growth level on a sustainable basis. “So, like the government and other stakeholders, business has also been giving much thought as to how we can transform the South African economy to higher levels of growth and employment.”

Parsons argued that the most important challenge lay not with the direction, or funding of policies, but with ensuring successful implementation and delivery. “We need to talk more about the need for a delivery State to achieve those goals.”