South Africa's ‘new growth path' will place employment at the centre of government economic policies, Cabinet said on Tuesday, announcing a target of creating five-million jobs in the next ten years.

The target would aim to reduce the unemployment rate from 25% to 15% by 2020.

The latest Labour Force Survey showed that the country's jobless rate stood at 25,3% in the third quarter of 2010, with 4,396-million people unemployed.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has previously indicated that South Africa would need to grow at 7% a year for a sustained period of 20 years to deal with the country's unemployment rate.

The new growth path, which was endorsed by President Jacob Zuma at a special Cabinet meeting on Monday, would seek to place the economy on a production-led trajectory and would target six key sectors, including infrastructure, agriculture, mining, the green economy, manufacturing and tourism and certain high-level services.

A Cabinet statement noted that the green economy, for example, could potentially create 300 000 additional direct jobs by 2020, with 80 000 in manufacturing and the rest in construction, operations and the maintenance of new environmentally friendly infrastructure.

This could increased to "well over" 400 000 by 2030.

The Industrial Development Corporation would raise the necessary capital to drive growth of the green industrial economy.

Cabinet also stated Gordhan would elaborate on interventions to achieve growth and job targets when he delivers his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement on Wednesday.

"The macroeconomic approach entails a careful balancing of more active monetary policy interventions to achieve growth and jobs targets, inter alia through a more competitive exchange rate and a lower cost of capital, with a more restrained fiscal stance and reprioritisation of public spending to ensure sustainability over time," Cabinet stated.