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EWN reports that according to Cosatu, struggling consumers and businesses need every bit of relief and it has urged the SA Reserve Bank (Sarb) to lower the repo rate by 50 basis points when its monetary policy committee next meets.
The trade union federation was reacting to GDP figures released by Stats SA on Tuesday for the first quarter. Stats SA reported that the economy grew by 1.1% in the first three months of this year. It was the third successive quarter of positive growth for the economy, but Stats SA said the economy was still 2.7% smaller than it had been in the fourth quarter of 2020. Cosatu said that poor economic growth figures reflected the slow pace with which both the government and business were moving to meet their commitments under the economic recovery and reconstruction plan. It said that the ongoing problems at Eskom and continued power cuts came at a cost and that efforts to clean up corruption at the power utility, ramp up maintenance and invest in new generation capacity needed to be speeded up as a matter of urgency. Cosatu also said that the government must ratchet up its investment and infrastructure drives to create jobs. It warned that continuing job losses and the rising cost of living were a recipe for disaster. It wants commercial banks to “come to the party” in helping make credit affordable.
- Read the original of the report in the above regard by Gaye Davis at EWN
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