Thomson Reuters - 29 September 2021 by Kim Harribserg

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Mail & Guardian - 21 September 2021 by Tunicia Phillips  

Engineering News - 14 September 2021 by Terence Creamer

Read online at Engineering News

SUMMARY: While the concept of a just transition dates back half a century, only recently has it entered the mainstream discourse. Its scope and application remain a source of debates and disagreements, with the term being already co-opted by various parties. The policy interventions required to effect and finance a just transition in a given context are similarly yet to be determined. This paper aims to contribute to unpacking the meaning of a just transition and the tools to foster it. It discusses the three key dimensions of a just transition - procedural, distributive and restorative justice - highlighted the varying degrees of ambition existing in different framings and review the policy toolbox for each of the three dimensions.

KEY FINDING: A socio-economic transition is underway, underpinned primarily by climate change and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. People, communities, companies and countries, however, have a different ability to respond and adapt to the disruption. This is compounded by the persistence of a deeply unequal political and economic system. This has led to calls for a “just transition” to an inclusive green economy, to ensure that vulnerable stakeholders are better off through the transition process, or at least not negatively impacted by it. Yet the scope and application of the just transition agenda remain a source of debates and disagreements.

Fin24 - 9 August 2021 by Lameez Omarjee

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Main Bulletin:  The Real Economy Bulletin - Second Quarter 2021   The Real Economy Bulletin - Second Quarter 2021

In this edition

Gross domestic product: The GDP grew by 1.2% in the second quarter of 2021, up from the (revised) figure of 1% in the first quarter. The economy recovered 19% over the past year from the sharp COVID-induced downturn in the second quarter of 2020. Still, as of the second quarter, it remained 1.4% lower than before the pandemic. The data for the GDP do not, however, reflect either the violent unrest in July or the impact of the severe third wave of the pandemic that hit the country through mid-September. Read more.   Read more.

Employment: Despite the relatively rapid growth in the GDP, the Quarterly Labour Force Survey found that total employment flattened out from the first to the second quarter of 2021. South Africa had recovered almost a million jobs since the second quarter of 2020, but total employment was still 8% below pre-pandemic levels. In the second quarter, lower skilled and informal workers saw large job gains, but they were offset by losses for semi-skilled and skilled employees. This outcome likely reflected reduced access to the UIF’s temporary employee relief scheme. Read more.

International trade: South Africa’s trade balance remained strongly positive, with a R163 billion (US$11 billion) surplus in the second quarter of 2021. The record trade surplus was almost exclusively due to the surge in international mining prices, as discussed above. Exports increased 18% from the previous quarter, reaching R491 billion in constant 2021 rands. That represented a 77% increase over the pandemic low point a year earlier. In constant rand, the second quarter of 2021 also saw an increase in imports, but they lagged well behind exports. As a result, the balance of trade rose almost 75% in the quarter. Read more.

Investment: In the second quarter of 2021, investment was around 9% lower than in the first quarter of 2020. It stopped growing in the fourth quarter of 2020. General government and private investment showed the slowest recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic downturn. Moreover, when Statistics South Africa rebased the GDP, it found that the investment rate was overestimated for the past decade. For the second quarter of 2021, it came to a mere 12.8% of the GDP – far below the level generally considered adequate to sustain growth. Read more.

Foreign direct investment projects: The TIPS FDI Tracker tracks foreign direct investment projects on a quarterly basis, using published information. In the second quarter of 2021, 10 projects were identified. The total investment value captured was almost R20 billion from six projects. The majority of investments captured are new projects. There were changes in the status of seven projects previously captured in the Tracker, these were updated accordingly. Read more.

Briefing note: Transnet National Ports Auhority: Operational Vulindlela has targeted key structural reforms in South Africa’s economic infrastructure to strengthen performance, thereby improving the efficiency of the economy and lowering the cost of doing business. One such reform is the establishment of Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) as a separate entity within the Transnet Group. But what does this mean and how does it help? Read the briefing note online: Transnet National Ports Authority.

Briefing note: The hospitality industry and COVID-19: Hospitality services – restaurants, hotels, bars and entertainment venues – pose a high risk of contagion as long as COVID-19 is endemic and only a small fraction of the population has been vaccinated. As a result, businesses in the industry have faced plummeting demand and a range of public-health restrictions. The industry is relatively labour intensive, which means its slowdown results in disproportionate damage to jobs and emerging enterprises. Read the briefing note online: The hospitality industry and COVID-19.

The Import Localisation and Supply Chain Disruption study is a quarterly report that seeks to identify goods from the list of imports identified in the Import Tracker report that South Africa could possibly viably manufacture. Each quarter focuses on five manufactured items from the list of imports in the corresponding quarter's Import Tracker report. The five products in this report are:

Product 1: Ceramic wares for chemical or other technical uses (technical ceramics)
Product 2: Diagnostic or laboratory reagents
Product 3: Vaccines for human medicine
Product 4: Cars and related vehicles: Cylinder capacity 1 500 cm3 to 3 000 cm3
Product 5: Beauty or make-up preparations and preparations for the care of the skin: Other

See: Import Tracker - First Quarter 2021

Lecture title: Structural Dynamics and Industrial Policies. Speaker: José Antonio Ocampo. Wednesday 8 September. To watch a recording of the lecture or get a copy of the presentation go to Alice Amsden Memorial Lecture.

Structural Dynamics and Industrial Policies  
Prof José Antonio Ocampo 

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Presentation: Structural dynamics and industrial policy

José Antonio Ocampo is a Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) and Member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He is also Chair of the Committee for Development Policy of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). He has occupied numerous positions at the United Nations and in his native Colombia, including UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and Minister of Finance, Minister of Agriculture, Director of the National Planning Office of Colombia, and Member of the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (Colombia’s central bank). He has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.

 About Alice Amsden

Alice Amsden, was a leading thinker on Industrial Policy and an expert in economic development. She served as the Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economy in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Amsden wrote extensively about the process of industrialization in emerging economies, particularly in Asia. Her work has shaped thinking in how developing countries approach industrialisation and she was influential in understanding the importance of the state as a creator of economic growth. Her work challenged the idea that globalization had produced generally uniform conditions in which emerging economies could find a one-size-fits-all path to prosperity.

Register online: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvdOurqT8vHdVxPDt7Ako_rx7mx0cxbc7x

Enquiries: rozale@tips.org.za