YouSaid · the spoken record

Kgalema Motlanthe

lines on the record
22
first
2015-11-25
most recent
2015-11-25
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “Ethiopia. They need the individual leaders to take command and really grip the situation. And we need accountability in these countries and we need the inter-corruption in many of these countries and we need good governance and we need professional administrations. I think the most significant question for Africa is whether it's got the institutional capacity to implement and execute. You use those words earlier today. And I think that can be true across Africa. And if we get the right young people, many of the young people coming out of the schools like Harvard and Yale and Wharton, when you visit those schools, they're full of African young people who are learning the skills and get them, applying those skills back home. It's a great promise of that implementation and execution improving. And that'll go a long way.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “You know, I'm a believer in Africa. I guess my career has been tilted towards Africa's growth and ultimately I believe that will be proven up. The fundamentals, demographics of Africa are so strong that services are required, financial service, telecommunications services, infrastructure, commodities, consumer behavior. All of this for that one billion population has a long road to run and we have very good companies servicing it out of South Africa. You've got very strong interest from Brazil, from India, from China, and you've got strong indigenous reforms happening in these countries. For all of those reasons, there's some fundamental belts and braces reinforcing good growth. But as I said earlier, I think that the individual countries at the end of the day, whether it's Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia,”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “So, this would include transport, energy, in particular electrification, would include airlines, aviation, arms manufacturing. The state really has tentacles right across the economy. And it's kind of Soviet-like. You know, we need to have much more of a modern market mentality. It doesn't necessarily mean that the ANC, which is effectively a social democratic party, should give up its social democratic goals. But the question is, what is the most kind of useful instrument for them to manage these companies, to be productive? And many think that looking to China as an example of how they've modernized those state enterprises listed them and produced independent management and governance from the state is a good example. And they are actually visiting and understanding what's happened in”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I think a critical issue is the appointment of leadership into the state owned enterprises. I think we have to modernize these state-owned enterprises. You know, the experience of China is over a 30-year period. One, they didn't give up control of their state-owned enterprises, but they modernized them, they listed them, they brought managements which were effectively free of political influence”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Beyond the delivery of government services, education, healthcare, and the like, where do you see other opportunities for South Africa to make investments or changes that could lead to more sustainable growth going forward?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “in the quality of the spent, and we're just going to have to get much more bang for our buck out of the state in terms of education and health outputs. And where 80% of the education budget, which is by international standards, a very large measure, it's almost 20% of our total budget is on education. 80% of that is spent on salaries. So one area in which they're going to have to look is the quality of that spend on salaries, spending the right amount, should they be decreasing that amount, should they be getting less people doing more? What is the quality of the people that they're employing in the education world? This is very difficult because many of the education salaried employers are trade unionists and allied into the ruling alliance of the government. But we can't afford to have a non-productive state. We can't afford to have a consumptive state that is effectively salaried employees.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “We experienced a huge amount of what it means to, as students then coming up against the establishment, except we were coming up against an extremely violent state at that point in time. And so when we look back now and we see these challenges of the students who are fighting effectively for free education, for more universal access to the universities, some of these students who have difficulty with paying for the universities feeding themselves and clothing themselves hit the universities both with the noble intent of getting an education. You know, we look back and we sort of wonder as to what our experiences mean for them today. And that's why I wrote that particular op-ed you refer to. My own point of view is that we have a very good track record in growing the resource in the last 20 years in the budget, but very poor track record.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “It's not obvious that there's short-term fixes. What the government did and the president did was effectively take the bite out of the situation by eradicating fee increases at universities, which was the main demand of the student body who were facing very difficult economic circumstances in meeting fee increases. And so by effectively eliminating fees in 2016, he's taken the issue off the table. The question will be how they find the resources to do this. And, you know, as a personal story, as a student leader in the 1980s, where we were facing a huge amount of repression in South Africa, violence as activists dealing with the problem of a racially divided South Africa that was now moving towards the intent of democracy heading our heads against the apartheid structure at the time.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Con you wrote recently an op-ed about the need to respond to growing unrest, particularly amongst the student population and how real reform has to broaden opportunity for that population. You have some personal experience. You share that in the op-ed with unrest in the student body. What are the short-term fixes that can help address those kinds of issues in South Africa?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “So we would think, you know, when you look at where's the productivity and where's the employment creation, and obviously what we need is productivity and employment creation in South Africa, that areas like tourism, South Africa, especially with a depreciated currency, is one most beautiful country to visit and two very, very cheap. And the services are extremely good value for money. So the tourism environment should be extremely robust. Number one, number two, the beneficiaries and value add manufacturing sector around the minerals that are produced in South Africa could be a very good area of growth. And lastly, the services, but exporting those services into Africa. You know, Africa has a very low base of services in education, private education, private health, banking technology, telecommunications. And so South African companies are in a very good position to export these services at a good”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Exactly. The attitude of the regulators towards South African companies buying companies offshore is quite facilitative because they realize in the long term the dividend flow from the offshore dollarized income of these companies will be to the net benefit of South Africa in the long term.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “I would say firstly, you know, sub-Saharan Africa is a growth rate of close to 4%. South Africa is around 1.6%. So the region is a reasonably good neighborhood. We have secondly very strong corporates, extremely well governed corporates that are participating in a very liquid stock market and therefore for investors, South Africa represents well-governed, well-controlled, highly compliant, well managed”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “You talked before about the resilience of the South African economy, even in a period of turmoil. What are the main factors or strengths of the economy that you see that will help it withstand some of the turmoil we're going to see as commodity prices stay low and the interest rates rise?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I would say their major issue is the politics of undertaking these reforms. In other words, the reforms that we have articulated need to be undertaken to get back to 3.2% growth are matters like, for example, getting labor productivity and wages, wage inflation, to be much more in line. To get the state-owned enterprises to modernize. Not unlike China, modernize their state-owned enterprises, to get far more clarity on the energy environment in South Africa. And to stop waste and get a far better quality of output bang for the buck from state-owned resources. So they want to know what the politics of undertaking these reforms are and whether we believe that the leadership in South Africa will effectively undertake these difficult reforms.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Particularly on the fiscal side, people are looking at mechanisms to grow exports, to look for other sources of revenue, for example, like tourism. And again, to undertake policy measures, which mean that we are not effectively our own worst enemies in South Africa with respect to things like growing tourism, growing beneficiation capacity, and part of this is, for example, structurally making the labor environment more productive, removing regulations, which, for example, in the Black Economic Empowerment space are very difficult for businesses to manage. It's one thing being able to manage rules you know. It's another for rules to change, and therefore there are factors in the internal markets which the regulators are beginning to understand that they need to settle down the regulatory environment.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I think the regulators, in particular the South African Reserve Bank, our Fed, is very concerned that the reality will further compound the selling pressure on the currency, which will also stoke inflation and therefore produce a greater squeeze on the South African economy. I think that's true across growth markets if you look at Brazil, you look at Russia, you look at Turkey, South Africa is no exception. So it's certainly discounted into the growth markets world as a whole that the Fed will increase rates, but the extent of that discounting is not complete. So we think there will be further volatility in the emerging markets, South Africa included.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “So you mentioned the Fed, the Fed's been talking about raising rates in the near future, and that's already had just the prospect of it's had a pretty dramatic effect on South Africa with Iran falling, as you said. So when the hike arrives at some point, how do you think the economy will respond? Is it already baked in or will there be further impact?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Is rent. And the problem obviously is that our costs in Rand have gone up significantly, energy, electricity and labor are the two biggest input costs into mining, and these have shot up significantly, which is partly our own goals in South Africa with regards to the cost of electricity and the cost of labor.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “You know, the triple whammy of the Fed increasing rates sometime soon, plus China's transformation from an exporter and an infrastructure-led economy to a services on consumer-led economy has led to this commodities problem. And the fact that third commodities price falling is impacting commodity producers like South Africa, which is of metals and mining, not on oil producer, is obviously having significant impact on the price of our ability to sell these commodities into the world, so platinum, mine ore, gold and so on and so forth. It's been partly countervailed by the fact that the currency has depreciated around 20% in 2015. And this means that on a currency adjusted basis, we are getting quite good prices in the international markets for commodities, but not what they were.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “So South Africa has particular challenges of its own, given its own history and culture, but it's also got some problems that a lot of emerging markets have. Commodity prices, particularly as demand falls out of China, have just plummeted. And it's an economy that, for better for worse, is highly dependent on its metals and mining industry. How is falling demand for commodities in particular impacted South Africa's outlook?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “and employment we actually have to get to more like 5% growth. The actual numbers are of around 8 million South Africans who cannot find work versus 16 million who have work. This is amongst the highest in all emerging markets. And so these questions of inequality and unemployment and a whole rising set of social demands from the population, like the students, but also the workers, the unemployed, the youth, is forcing people to ask the question, how do we actually change the structure of the economy to be more inclusive? How do we get greater growth?”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “We took it on because clients are asking in the context of our growth rates in South Africa dropping on a three-year trajectory to around 1.6% relative to double that for the last 20 years, whether we were slipping towards something more serious in terms of our fiscal balances. So we studied, we did some stress testing of South Africa to financial crisis conditions and discovered because of our deep financial market, our ability to absorb offshore selling, because of the deep liquid currency, and because of our low levels of foreign debt, that we were actually able to absorb financial crisis, obviously within limits, but this means that we have an ability to carry on growing, but we need to restore the growth rate back to our normative 3.2%. And frankly, to deal with unemployment in South Africa, which is extraordinarily high at around 25% broad.”

    2015-11-25 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Charting the Course for a Stronger South Africa · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT