South Africa needs to achieve “significantly higher rates” of economic growth if it is to succeed in meeting the needs of the people, President Thabo Mbeki has told trade unionists.
He said one of the issues being studied by his government was import parity pricing as it affected the chemical industry.
Speaking at the congress of the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union (Ceppwawu) in Johannesburg on Wednesday, Mbeki said South Africa needed to significantly improve overall levels of investment — from both the public and private sectors — to draw far greater numbers of the unemployed into the formal economy, to improve the economic opportunities of the poor and the marginalised, “and to ensure the state is better resourced further to provide affordable basic services and infrastructure”.
“The tasks that need to be undertaken to achieve these objectives have been extensively discussed within the democratic movement, within government and within society more broadly.”
Mbeki said the alliance of the ruling African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of SA Trade Unions needs to engage more directly and coherently in the political and ideological battle of ideas, countering the conservative positions that continue to dominate the public discourse with the progressive thinking that has underpinned and sustained the struggle for democratic change in South Africa.
Mbeki said: “Obviously, to achieve the growth and development of the Ceppwawu sectors, we will have to encourage higher rates of investment in these sectors. At the same time we will have to ensure that these sectors are internationally competitive. It is not only clothing and textiles that are faced with competition by lower cost producers.”
He said his government was also looking at the issue of import parity pricing as it affects the chemical industry.
“Our development programme for this industry will also have to encourage the beneficiation of greater volumes of the base chemicals our economy produces.” – I-Net Bridge