In Parliament this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the World Bank and the IMF had identified concentrated ownership of the economy, not BEE, as constraining South Africa’s economic growth. Was he right?
“For you, sir, to say that BEE [black economic empowerment] is holding our economy back goes completely against what even the World Bank says!”
Thus responded a decidedly testy President Cyril Ramaphosa to Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder in Parliament this week on the topic of the government’s economic policies and whether he would be prepared to ditch BEE.
Ramaphosa continued: “A few years ago, the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] came out with a report that one of the things that holds our economy back from growth is the level of concentration. Concentration because, they said, the ownership of the economy is in far too few hands. Ownership has not spread. That is what the World Bank and IMF said.”
But is Ramaphosa correct?
