poor chance for poverty
24 April 2008

Government stands a "fair chance" of halving poverty and unemployment by 2014, the Presidency said.
According to the 2007 annual report of the accelerated and shared growth initiative for SA (AsgiSA) released, the successes so far have been striking. "The rate of economic growth and investment has exceeded even our most ambitious targets," the report says. "We have experienced a period of growth unlike any before in the country's history. "Never before have we experienced four consecutive years of growth greater than 4.5 percent. Employment has grown strongly, even though unemployment remains high," it says.

The more notable achievements towards AsgiSA objectives include raising the growth rate to an average of over five percent in recent years and increasing the rate of investment to over 20 percent of gross domestic product from 15 percent.

Other notable achievements include reducing unnecessary red tape, getting universities to commit to rapidly increasing their output of engineers over the next three years, and developing new ways to more than double the output of artisans.  "If we are able to continue to improve the quality of our policies and their effective implementation, there is a fair chance that we will be able to achieve the ambitious target of halving poverty and unemployment between 2004 and 2014.

AsgiSA was launched by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in February 2006 to address six "binding constraints on growth".
AsgiSA's objectives could be achieved if the economy grew at an average rate of 4.5 percent in the period to 2009, and by an average of six percent from 2010 to 2014. The report says, for the 2006/07 financial year ending 31 March 2007, national departments (excluding infrastructure transfers to public entities/agencies and conditional grants to provinces) had spent 86.7 percent (R4.9-billion) of their budgeted R4.626-billion infrastructure spend. The improvement in spending levels continued during the first and second quarters of 2007/08 ending 30 September 2007, with national departments spending 32.9 percent (R1.842-billion) of their budgeted infrastructure spending - an increase of 12.7 percent compared to the same period in 2006/07.

As at 30 September 2007, the National Infrastructure Project Register (NIPR) had 22 706 registered projects with an estimated project value of R183.7-billion.   About 8150 projects worth R74.6-billion were in the construction stage, with 7885 projects at various other stages of planning. The balance of 6671 projects were at various stages of completion, the report says. The bulk of the projects were in the housing sector (7857) and under the municipal infrastructure grant (8434) - mostly water, sanitation, and municipal roads projects.

Of the 8150 projects under construction, 431 (5.3 percent) were overdue, reflecting a slight deterioration compared to September 2006, when four percent of projects were overdue. Reasons included poor planning, hold-ups in the environmental impact assessment processes, and late conclusion of funding arrangements.

However, a larger proportion of projects had shifted into the construction stage at September 2007 - 50.7 percent compared to 41.8 percent in September 2006, he report says.

Sapa,  http://business.iafrica.com