‘We couldn’t fix everything overnight,’ says positive but cautious Nene

President Cyril Ramaphosa fielded questions from Chinese media in Beijing on Tuesday night at the end of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit but steered clear of the burning issue on South Africa’s technical economic recession, which would have dampened the strides he made at the summit as he pushed for fair trade relations between China and Africa.

The government’s official response to the headline grabbing report by Stats SA, released earlier on the day, was instead left to finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, who spoke only to South African journalists after Ramaphosa had concluded his briefing.

Nene said the country pinned the hopes of recovery from the economic contraction, recorded in succession during the first two quarters of this year, on an economic reform package that the Cabinet was drafting in order to address the bottlenecks and barriers constraining the economy.

“The reform package by Cabinet also in the pipeline [and] we understand the impatience of South African public because we want things delivered as of yesterday. But some of these things could not be done overnight,” said Nene.

He said that Ramaphosa’s administration was racing against time and intended to have these confidence boosting measures ready at the latest before he presented the medium term budget policy statement in Parliament, likely to be held towards the end of next month.

“The pressure is too much but I think we are making good progress and some of these things cannot be implemented overnight. We are saying they are under way but not just in discussions but also in practical action,” he said, citing interventions in mining as an example.

Nene pointed to a slack in agriculture as the main reason behind the economic erosion, saying that the statistics were “entirely surprising because we did not think we will have second contraction [and] we were hoping for a moderate recovery”.

Performance in agriculture took a 29% knock, which the slight recovery in mining was not adequate to offset, he said. The manufacturing sector also struggled.

However, Nene was confident that a readjustment could turn agriculture around because the sector had previously performed well.

“With what we are putting in place, stimulation of growth and a number of structural reforms are in the process of being finalised. We are positive that with that we should be able to turn things around.”

“I would imagine that by the time we go to the medium-term budget statement we should have concluded on them,” said Nene.

Ramaphosa was more optimistic about South Africa’s prospects, telling the Chinese journalists that the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was a huge success and “in many ways it was historic”.

“It just consolidated the view that the relationship between China and Africa has entered a golden age,” he said.

He said it was “a fantastic age of deep cooperation and beneficial partnership, where all of us look at win-win outcomes”.

He said China would continue to cooperate with various African countries on an equal basis and with deep respect for one another.

Ramaphosa said the arrangement would refute and debunk “notion propagated by people who are envious and jealous of this relationship [saying] that it is a new colonialism”.

“There is no new colonialism [because] this is a relationship that has its roots deep in history. We were all engaged in struggle against colonialists from the Northern hemisphere and we worked together side by side. Now Africa is independent and it is free to choose its partners.”

He said that in 2015 the Johannesburg declaration carried a number of initiatives and nearly all of them have been implemented. He lauded the $60 billion of assistance and investments announced by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Monday.

“This round another $60 billion was announced and that too, I am sure, is going to lead to implementation,” said Ramaphosa.

He said that both China and Africa agreed that the trade deficit issue needed to be addressed and China was open to the proposals and also wanted to open the access to its market for value added goods from Africa.

“So that is a wonderful partner to have. You do not have a partner that wants to be creating barriers and stopping others partners from trade”.

	Setumo Stone Political journalist City Press p: +27 11 713 9001 w: www.citypress.co.za  e: setumo.stone@citypress.co.za
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