Cape Town – President Cyril Ramaphosa says the South African economy has rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic and is now larger than it was before the pandemic.
Ramaphosa said this on Monday in his weekly newsletter.
He said that most of the 2 million jobs lost during the pandemic have been recovered.
However, he also acknowledged that the economy is growing too slowly due to global economic instability and South Africa’s electricity crisis, making it challenging to create jobs at the required pace.
Many South Africans are feeling the pressure of rising living costs.
While government has done much to implement the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, which was launched in October 2020, Ramaphosa said that they have always maintained that the success of its efforts would depend on greater partnership across society.
The economy is now larger than it was before the pandemic and the 2 million jobs that were lost have largely been recovered. Yet the combination of global economic instability and the effects of our electricity crisis have meant that our economy continues to grow too slowly and… pic.twitter.com/VLw8lynmSu
— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) October 2, 2023
“Our collaboration with business, for example, has moved far beyond discussions. Since June this year, government has been working closely with Business for South Africa on critical actions to address the key challenges of energy, logistics, and crime and corruption,” he said.
The President highlighted that last week’s meeting confirmed that good traction has been achieved in these areas, most notably in the work being done by the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM) to end load shedding and achieve energy security.
Ramaphosa underscored an illustrative instance of ongoing efforts, which involves the business sector mobilising additional capacity and expertise to aid in the revitalisation of Eskom’s power plants.
This encompassed the dispatch of technical support teams to five power stations, namely Kendal, Kriel, Majuba, Matla, and Tutuka, as well as the deployment of specialists to expedite the restoration of units at the Kusile power station, which had sustained damage in November last year.
In a noteworthy development, Kusile unit 3 was brought back into operation over the weekend, a full two months ahead of the originally planned schedule.
“Full implementation of the plan to improve the performance of Eskom’s existing power stations, add new generation capacity and reform the energy sector is expected to result in over 12 000 megawatts of generation capacity being recovered or added to the system by the end of 2024,” the president said.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
