National Development Plan (NDP) - back in the spotlight

As the name suggests, the National Development Plan (NDP) is a plan -- surprise, surprise -- to develop the nation. It identifies the challenges facing the country and sketches solutions in order to triple the economy by 2030 while reducing unemployment and inequality levels. Although it is central to the Plan, the NDP goes beyond the economy looking also at issues like national unity. Find the National Development Plan (NDP) here.

In a meeting at the Chris Hani Institute recently, attended by both Jeremy Cronin and Bobby Godsell, attention has once again been focused on the NDP. Cronin is the deputy minister for Public Works, deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and an African National Congress National Executive Committee member.

Cronin's criticisms include:

• The negligible target for reducing inequality (from 0.7% to 0.6& on the Gini coefficient over the next 17 years). Not much of a target, is it?
• That the NDP forsees the manufacturing sector shrinking from 12% of gross domestic product to 9.6% in 2030.
• The NDP is not a state planning commission so how will the Plan be implemented?

For Cronin a broad vision needs to be built around reindustrialisation, the provision of infrastructure and the developing of skills.

Godsell, the current Business Leadership South Africa chairperson and someone well known in business circles, urged the meeting to view the Plan as a living document. The Plan was "eminently debatable".

There was agreement that a State planning entity working alongside a more independent, non-government body was a good thing. Godsell saw Government-only planning as having the tendency to be non-integrated (operating in silo's) and thus ineffective. It was good to have people not in government, thinking out of the box in addition to a State planning entity.

Both saw the NDP's planning for the long-term as a positive.

Agriculture, the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) in particular, has held the NDP as holding much promise for the country. Find the article written at the beginning of 2013 by Dr John Purchase here.

The NDP is covered in the Job creation chapter of The Agri Handbook for South Africa (in particular, see the "Ideas to promote economic growth" heading). In addition, many of the crop and livestock chapters have some reference to that particular sub-sector's potential to contribute to job creation, including the areas identified in the Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs) like rooibos and organic produce.

We would like to think we are contributing to the debate.