ECONOMIC POLICY. Pulling together.

Byline: Carol Paton

ECONOMIC POLICY. P ulling together Government seems to have settled the debate on the direction of economic policy with job creation at its heart, but politicians are still low on solutions WHAT IT MEANS: Private sector still seen as key. DBSA and IDC to provide input Employment will be at the centre of government economic policy EBRAHIM PATEL The search for jobs, everyone agrees, must be at the top of the economic policy agenda. The great difficulty is creating an environment that will bring growth enough to create the millions of jobs SA needs. But one hurdle at least seems to have been cleared this week with a sense that the different factions in government are moving towards consensus on a growing number of issues. Finance minister Pravin Gordhan, in the annual medium-term budget policy statement, and minister of economic development Ebrahim Patel, who released the broad strokes of his long-awaited new growth path document the day before the midterm budget, now seem to be in agreement on the policy path to bolster economic growth. Gordhan said this week that our central goal is unequivocal: we have to accelerate growth in the SA economy and we have to do so in ways that rapidly reduce poverty, unemployment and …