Key Points:
- AsgiSA is aimed at accelerating economic growth, and distributing its benefits more widely, aiming to achieve this via decisive and focused-interventions, targeting six specific constraints on growth.
- The Joint Initiative on Priority Skills for South Africa (JIPSA) is a sub-set of AsgiSA. It identifies areas of skills shortages that are aligned with the implementation of AsgiSA, and works on the assumption that, as a result of critical shortages, the process to acquire skills needs to be shortened.
- To achieve its goals, JIPSA has drawn on the expertise in skills development from people in the departments of Education and Labour, as well as representatives from the private sector, research institutions, and education institutions.
- AsgiSA has recognised that growth can only be achieved if both local and foreign private sector investment increases significantly. Foreign direct investment is particularly important, given the low savings rate in South Africa and the already large deficit on the current account of the balance of payments.
- AsgiSA has further recognised that although there are challenges with respect to public-private partnerships, a bigger role for the private sector would help to ease concerns about public sector capacity, and help to fund higher levels of fixed investment.
Press release: AsgiSA leaves out critical obstacles to growth
