A new business and government partnership to help young people get a job for a year will be announced within the next few weeks.This is according to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who suggested radical "change" was needed to break the back of youth unemployment.Gordhan was speaking to members of the investment community at the inaugural BDFM summit held in Sandton yesterday.After a year of work experience young people were more likely to remain in the economy and be able to get jobs, he said.Gordhan said many ordinary people felt excluded from economic growth. "Growth is no longer the panacea. Citizens are impatient with the government and the elite."He urged the business leaders to focus on "inclusivity"."Think about ... what we could do to make people part of the economy."Workforce management group Adcorp's labour law expert John Botha said the project Gordhan was referring to was one in which business had been challenged to create 100,000 youth internships by 2020, taking in young people for a year at a time."Once a person has had 12 months of temporary work through Adcorp they have a 30% chance of remaining employed," he said.Botha said the youth jobs project was "not a legislated initiative such as the youth wage subsidy"."This is a social partnership similar to the #CEO Sleepout."Speaking at the summit, Gordhan said he believed there was a more than 50% chance the country would not be downgraded by ratings agencies later this year."On the balance there are those difficulties but there are positive things that are working in this country. We need to highlight them."He warned, however, that the surprising economic growth of 3.3% in the second quarter could not be sustained and pledged continued fiscal prudence, a key recommendation by ratings agencies."The next year or so is quite critical, not just for ratings but for ourselves as an economy and as a country as well," Gordhan said, adding that sustainable growth would only be achieved if South Africa did things "spectacularly differently"."We ourselves are not in recession territory. We have interesting small green shoots in different parts of the economy."If we nurture those shoots in the right kind of way . we can certainly get back to 2% and 3% growth over the next few years. I'm an optimist by nature," he said.In what was likely a reference to the Hawks, who have summoned Gordhan to answer questions about his involvement in an alleged SARS rogue unit, Gordhan said institutions needed to be credible."In order for all of this [economy to grow] to work, we require the institutions of our country - both constitutional and otherwise - to have the right kind of expertise, the right kind of skills and the right kind of credibility and integrity." - Additional reporting by Reuters and BDLive..