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Lucille Davie
Over the past five years, the government has spent more than R100-billion on employment programmes, creating more than six million job opportunities, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said in his 2014 Budget speech, delivered on Wednesday 26 February in parliament in Cape Town.
“Allocations will continue to grow strongly, and 6 million job opportunities will be created over the next five years,” he said.
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Job creation was a central priority of the National Development Plan (NDP), Gordhan said, the government’s 30-year plan to boost economic growth. Since the low point of the 2009 recession, 1.3-million jobs had been created. But unemployment remained at an uncomfortable 24%, or almost 5-million people unemployed, a figure that was “still far too high”.
“We know that job creation is a central priority of the National Development Plan. Bantu bakuthi masibambisane sakhe amathuba emisebenzi. (Fellow South Africans, let us work together to create opportunities for employment.)”
Since 1996, more than 5.9-million jobs had been created, and since 1994 the average income of South Africans had increased by over 30%. This “will continue to rise in the years ahead”.
Budget 2014 key documents
People’s guides
Billions of rands allocated
“It is time for a bold vision for our future as set out in the National Development Plan,” said Gordhan. “It is time for action and implementation. It is time to move South Africa forward to the next stage of our historic journey to more rapid growth, jobs and development – time to leave behind poverty, joblessness and inequality.”
Several measures were in place to reach these goals, to which “billions of rand have been allocated”:
And to ease the burden on those who lost their jobs, the government would increase unemployment benefits from 238 to 365 days, on condition that claimants were actively seeking work.
Gordhan said that the growth projection for this year was 2.7%, with an expected budget deficit of 4%. The global economic outlook remained unsteady, and South Africa was experiencing a weak exchange rate. Ideally, the economy should grow at 5% a year to create jobs, he acknowledged.
Support for business
The state would support businesses in an effort to encourage job creation. This would take the form of:
Gordhan said that over the past five years, more than R100-billion had been spent on employment programmes, creating more than four million job opportunities. Also over the past five years, spending on infrastructure, where jobs were created, amounted to R1-trillion. In the next three years, R847-billion would be spent. In addition, R22-billion was spent on industrial incentives over the past five years. Almost the same amount was budgeted for the following three years.
Infrastructure investment
The public infrastructure investment of R847-billion over the next three years would be spent in the following ways:
“The private sector is also making an increasing contribution to infrastructure investment,” said Gordhan. Contracts for 47 renewable energy projects were concluded in the 2012/13 year. “These will add 2 460MW of power capacity, and investment of R70-billion. A further R45-billion in investment will be contracted this year.”
He added: “We have achieved much over the past five years, in a very difficult post-recession climate. But there is more to do ahead, more to build, more to put right, more to learn, more to implement. We can only do this together.”
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