President Jacob Zuma has called a meeting of key ministers in a fortnight to devise a strategy to spur the South African economy out of recession, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Thursday.
“We will be thrashing out detail as well as the timeline,” Gigaba said of the planned meeting.
He told a media briefing in Pretoria the president had also convened ministers in the economic cluster on Wednesday night to discuss “critical interventions which need to be taken”.
Gigaba reiterated that it seemed highly unlikely that South Africa would meet National Treasury’s own growth forecast of 1.3 percent of GDP for the current financial year and said beyond maintaining the policy of fiscal consolidation, he would have to look at reprioritising funds and cutting state spending where possible.
“We are going to have to take hard decisions which may require that we look at the possibility of further cuts in terms of government spending,” he said, noting as an aside that public sector wage negotiations were looming.
“The reprioritising, the reallocation is going to be very difficult but necessary,”
Gigaba described the meeting between the president and ministers as “very frank” and called for policy certainty to reassure investors and unlock growth.
– African News Agency (ANA)
