The National Treasury economic policy discussion paper

In August 2019, the National Treasury released a discussion paper on economic policy for comment, titled Economic transformation, inclusive growth, and competitiveness: Towards an Economic Strategy for South Africa. The paper lists a compendium of proposals loosely arranged around six “fundamental building blocks” for sustainable growth plus a host of “growth reforms” organised into five themes. This briefing note first reviews the shortcomings in policy development procedures that lead to the repeated publication of bloated and ineffective economic strategies. It then briefly reviews some of the proposals in the text with an appendix that lists all the recommendations and provides some responses. Finally, the concluding section suggests a few imperatives for boosting growth in the short run.