Organised business in South Africa has lashed out at the ANC following pronouncements made on the Reserve Bank post the party's recent national lekgotla.
The CEO of the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Alan Mukoki, said in a strongly-worded statement on Friday that policy certainty is what is needed.
He said pronouncements at a media briefing this week by ANC secretary-general, Ace Magashule, on expanding the mandate of the Central Bank, were precisely what leads to market instability.
Mukoki's called on the ANC and the government to streamline and professionalise its communications efforts and capability, especially when it comes to communicating matters of economic, fiscal, monetary and other key policy issues.
He said the ad hoc stratified nature of various spokespeople on these subjects is self-defeating, after the Finance Minister and Reserve Bank governor, contradicted Magashule's statements.
"The unfortunate experience of the past few days has been that of a government at war with itself," he said.
"The uncoordinated approach of the ruling party, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), the Finance Ministry, all weighing in on the subject and expressing different interpretations and views on the same policy matter around the SARB, has created a lot of the avoidable confusion and fog".
Mukoki said most of the debate around the SARB was already in the ruling party's January 2019 Manifesto.
"As business, we were looking forward to the ruling party's clear policy decisions on the matter. What we experienced was unfortunate and caused unnecessary consternation and uncertainty," he said.
