THE restructuring of the National Loan Guarantee Scheme to improve accessibility to small businesses and the extension of basic income relief to the unemployed who do not receive any form of state assistance.
These are some of the suggestions put on the table by the ANC national executive committee lekgotla as announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the close of the three-day meeting on Sunday evening.
Ramaphosa admitted that the R500 billion stimulus package which he unveiled at the beginning of the first lockdown has up to so far not benefited the small, medium and micro enterprises for a number of reasons but didn’t state any.
“This initiative was meant to assist businesses in our country so that they would not need to retrench employed people. We have now lost more than 2 million people’s employment. And we, therefore, need to revisit this scheme, restructure it fundamentally and make sure that what the government initially offered together with the participation of the central bank, which will be channeled through the commercial banks should still happen,” said Ramaphosa.
He added that the meeting stressed implementation should be in this year and acknowledged that the current economic reforms must not only address immediate challenges but lay the basis for the achievements of the broader transformation objectives.
“The lekgotla stressed the need importance of moving strictly into implementation. In other words, we are moving the gear of implementation up a higher level where we want to focus on implementation and where there is no implementation there should be consequences for management
“The lekgotla has agreed that, in the context of the continuing COVID pandemic, we need to consider the extension of basic income relief to unemployed people who do not receive any other form of state assistance. This would depend on the state of public finances and that there should be a clear exit strategy,” he said.
He said obviously the meeting has stressed the priority of defeating the coronavirus pandemic which continues to batter the economy and take more lives.
Ramaphosa said as the governing party and its alliance partners were preparing for local elections, it was important to nominate competent cadres with integrity.
