DA outlines economic plan to create 2-million jobs in five years

The DA unveiled its economic policy, the first in 10 years, which it says is the correct pathway to “unleash enterprise, grow the economy and create jobs”. 

Highlighting unemployment as the biggest crisis facing the country, party leader John Steenhuisen on Friday said that 10-million people cannot find work was not a result of the forces of nature but rather an ANC-made disaster.

“It is a disaster designed and executed at the hands of the men and women in the ANC.

“It is because of the deliberate choices of the men and women inside the ANC that 309,000 manufacturing jobs were destroyed over the past 16 years, and that South Africa’s tax base has not only shrunk but also bears one of the highest tax burdens in the world, with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 25.5%.”

“The deliberate choices of the ANC have plunged us into a fiscal crisis, where R1 out of every R5 collected from taxpayers is used to pay our R5.2-trillion debt bill, leaving less money every year for investment in job-creating infrastructure.”

Through his party's newly birthed economic policy, Steenhuisen vowed the DA had the ability to turn things around.

“This detailed policy, developed in consultation with some of the best economic thinkers in the world and built on global examples of best practice, presents the most compelling and exciting economic offer South Africans have seen in a generation.

“It introduces a clean break from the destructive statist policies of the ANC that created our unemployment crisis, and sets South Africa down a new path to growth based on modern, pragmatic and fit-for-purpose policies.”

Having promised to create 2-million new jobs at the party's manifesto launch in February, Steenhuisen said the foundation was to pave way for a new, rapidly growing and modern economy.

“It is all built on getting the right people into government so we can make better choices. The policy sets out how we will improve the ease of doing business, which alone will unlock between 250,000 and 400,000 new jobs. Through making better fiscal choices we will generate another 250,000 to 500,000 new jobs.”

The policy proposals include reforming labour laws, the introduction of a new youth employment opportunity certificate, expanding collective bargaining to extend worker representation and exempting small, medium and micro enterprises from wage agreements they cannot afford.

The party argued such measures, on their own, could create a further 500,000 to 1-million new jobs.

“Add to this the better choices we will make on industrial policy that will generate between 250,000 and 500,000 new jobs, and better choices on trade policy which will add another 100-000 to 150,000 jobs.

“Unlike other political parties that make thumb-sucking jobs promises, every pledge contained in the DA’s economic policy is the product of thorough costing and cutting-edge research.”

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