SA’s path to recovery won’t be a bed of roses, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned that South Africa had all the ingredients for an economic recovery and now was the time to work together to make it happen.

The president has emphasised in his weekly newsletter that as coronavirus infections surge the country, it is also confronted with the economic damage of this pandemic.

Ramaphosa however said that plans would be put in place to recover.

The president said also mentioned that the most recent economic indicators showed a drastic decline in economic activity and despite measures that had been put to place, businesses were being forced to close and jobs were being lost.

Ramaphosa said that the path to recovery would be long and difficult, but it needed to start now.

The president also said that this was not the time to despair, but to act.

He said that working with social partners, South Africa needed to speed up the pace of implementation to rebuild the base of our economy and with the advent of the coronavirus, we needed to now pursue new sources of growth within a fundamentally different context.

Government will finalise an economic programme in the coming weeks and the president said that as the recovery took hold and the world gradually adjusted to a global economy marked by COVID-19, he expected economic activity to pick up.

Ramaphosa concluded that while we were faced with a health, social, and economic crisis of massive proportions, government was neither daunted, nor discouraged.