Issued by: Gauteng Provincial Government
The next ten years will see an acceleration in the pace of international integration, a stretched out, stable recovery in industrial countries, moderate real interest rates, low inflation, resilient private capital flows to the developing world and growth in trade of over 6 per cent a year. Importantly, general commodity prices are likely to flatten in real terms with oil prices continue a fairly sharp downward trend and the gold price hopefully stabilising around the $400 mark after its recent fall. A $400 price range will be extremely good news for all of us in an economic era in which sustainable jobs will be as valuable as gold and as precious and rare as the Cullinan diamond.
Sub-Saharan Africa, after growing at only 0,7% between 1991 and 1994, experienced an upturn to around 4% GDP growth in 1995. The next decade should see continued growth at this rate if reforms are maintained, if the terms of trade are sustained and if civil peace is consolidated.
But even with this rate of growth, low projected per capita income growth and severe cuts in international aid suggest that prospects for meaningful poverty reduction on the continent remain modest.
This is not sustainable. Africa must confound the world by integrating into the world economy more rapidly and more competitively than anyone expects.
More rapid success will only be forthcoming through judicious and innovative policy measures. We must conform to certain key international orthodoxies with respect to monetary and fiscal policy, the nature and size of the civil service and our legal and constitutional frameworks. But we must also break the mould through accelerated education and training and through substantially increased beneficiation of our own mineral wealth.
It is well known that South Africa accounts for almost 30% of the raw materials that go into the world's jewellery, but that we manufacture less than a quarter of a percent of this jewellery. A similar situation pertains with respect to many other minerals that are sourced in the bowels of this continent's rich earth. The time has come for us as Africans to unite in developing the skills, the expertise and the technology that will enable us to take full advantage of our god-given natural inheritance.
Through a sensible, coherent and stable energy and minerals policy we will contribute meaninto the future prosperity and wel It is our view that Gauteng, th its sophisticated infrastructanced financial system, is perfeceway role in the emergency of an at adds meaningful value to the minerals and oils that we have in such abundance. And that thereby enables us to grow our economy in the interests of creating wealth amongst all of our people.
In this spirit it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the place of gold. Your presence here will play a role in ensuring that the streets of Africa will no longer be splattered with blood and suffering, but will be paved with gold and sunshine.
We wish you a successful and business-like conference in which your deliberations bring light to all of us. 10 June 1996