Opposition parties were cautious yesterday in welcoming resolutions adopted at the Growth and Development Summit, saying much still needed to be done.

The summit, which was held in Midrand on Saturday, saw the signing of an historic agreement for all parties to work together to revitalise South Africa's economy and create jobs.

Democratic Alliance jobs spokesperson Mark Lowe said the agreement seemed to provide much better assurances that the steps agreed to would be implemented.

"However, it remains to be seen whether it will achieve its goals of reducing unemployment substantially," he said in a statement.

Whatever agreements were made, South Africa needed to sustain a growth rate of six percent a year for an extended period to reduce the backlog of unemployment and poverty.

"The steps agreed to yesterday (Saturday) will go some way to alleviating poverty, but much more needs to be done in order to eradicate it.

"Unfortunately, an opportunity to inject real growth into the economy was lost in the compromise reached with labour. Business concerns about some laws and regulations discouraging investment were not addressed," Lowe said.

The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) threatened to pull out of the summit agreement because it felt business was let off the hook by the government instead of being forced to make firm commitments to investment.

A meeting took place between the administrative heads of the tripartite alliance at the eleventh hour, which reportedly led to a key clause being rephrased after Cosatu said it was too vague.

As adopted, the clause states that business, retirement funds, the life assurance industry, government, labour and community organisations would work towards contributing five percent of their investable income to job creation projects.

The New National Party cautioned that the decision to encourage investors to make five percent of their income available should be considered carefully.

"It is unacceptable to force people to apply their retirement funds, for which they have saved a lifetime, so that they can retire independent of the government and their children - to risky projects with low proceeds.

"This may erode pension funds in such a way that they will not be able to be financially independent later in life," NNP finance spokesperson Willem Odendaal said in a statement.

He said the good news of the summit was that its partners came to an agreement without any of them boycotting the summit.

The bad news was Cosatu getting its way when talks on loosening up South Africa's rigid labour laws were swept from the table.

This prevented the medium, small and micro business sector, especially in the informal economic sector, to free itself from the smothering labour laws that prevented them from negotiating directly with workers about wages and other conditions of service, he said.

This resulted in the business sector, which created most of the new jobs in South Africa, not being able to play its important role of fighting poverty.

Odendaal welcomed the joint venture by the government and the business sector to make available R250-billion for new development, especially for the betterment of South Africa's infrastructure.

The Freedom Front welcomed the summit's decisions but said it would not be the final answer to South Africa's unemployment problems.

FF leader Pieter Mulder said South Africa needed to change from a "you owe me" culture to a "take your own initiative" one.

He said communities needed to become more self-reliant when it came to their economic well being instead of waiting for handouts.

"The final answer lies in the development of self-reliant communities who take responsibility for the own developments.

As long as these communities wait for the government to improve their poverty and unemployment problems, will we get nowhere," Mulder said.

The United Democratic Movement said the summit, as it had expected, was just "another talk shop".

"Nothing new came out of this summit that would benefit millions of poor South Africans, except old empty promises about breaking the back of unemployment," said UDM leader Bantu Holomisa.

He said the strategy adopted to invest on infrastructure was exactly what Finance Minister Trevor Manuel had promised during his budget speech earlier this year. Manuel's promises of the government committing itself to put billions of rands in infrastructure development had not yet materialised.

"It is a pity that organisations such as Cosatu capitulate with the government when such a promise is made without clear targets or deadlines.

"One would have expected the summit to come up with a type of micro-economic policy that will suit South Africa through a programme of action".

The country needed a proper discussion on the economy involving all stakeholders to ensure that the government intervened and invested in the economy. – Sapa.