South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday launched a handbook that outlines South Africa’s economic history and key challenges.
The Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy is a collaborative work in which leading academics, economists, anthropologists and scientists – including members of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council – worked together to produce a voluminous study of the structure of the South African economy in its varied sectors and industries.
The 47-chapter handbook profiles such sectors and issues as energy, the environment, trade, industry, regulation, the labour market, income distribution, social policy and the macroeconomy.
Ramaphosa bemoaned the fact that South Africa’s economy is highly concentrated, with economic activity “clustered in a few, mostly urban, centres.”
“Key sectors of the economy are dominated by a small number of players,” he said during the launch of the handbook.
The publication offers diverse analytical perspectives and debates that have implications for policymakers in the current climate of constrained economic growth in a COVID-19 pandemic era, weak economic transformation and the challenges of inequality and unemployment.
JN/APA