CITIES, TOWNS AND SETTLEMENTS

Anti-business, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Central planning, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Enterprise friendly environment, Free State, Job creation and unemployment, Limpopo, Northern Cape, Public service delivery, Small towns, Small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs), SME, Sole proprietors, Spending power (wealth/poverty), State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), Western Cape

GDP shrinkage of 12%: It’s not the virus, but the lock-down, stupid!

Johannes Wessels (@johannesEOSA1) & Mike Schüssler (@mikeschussler)

At the end of the initial 3 weeks lock-down a GDP decline of about 5% was considered as quite a catastrophic outcome. Even at that level, it was considered worth the price since delaying the spread of the Covid 19 virus would give a window of opportunity for the health sector to get beds, ventilators and care protocols in place for the spike that would inevitably come.

The minister of trade and industry (dti), Ebrahim Patel, however dismissed the negative projections of economic shrinkage as mere “thumb-sucking”.

After prolonging the hard lock-down with just a gradual easing to level 4 to end May, the growing queues of the hungry waiting for food parcels, the increase in the claims from the unemployment insurance fund and the drastic shrinking of the state’s purse, would make a 5% decline in GDP a dream outcome.

The GDP figures for Q1 2020 will only be known end June. Data from other countries indicate that those whose governments had opted for a hard lock-down are in for excessive economic damage.

Change in GDP trend is the difference between growth in 2019 and 2020 1^st quarters, implying that the Philippines that experienced a change of -6% went from 5.9% GDP growth in Q1 2019 to -0.1% in Q1 2020. This chart reveals the following:

Countries with a hard lock-down that kept only essential services and providers open, saw an average decline of 5,2% in GDP trend.

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Anti-business, Central planning, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, ECONOMIC POLICY AND STRATEGY, Factories, Informal businesses, Job creation and unemployment, Lockdown, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Small towns, Sole proprietors, Tourism & hospitality services

Lockdown? Or is it perhaps meltdown?

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

Halfway into a five-week lockdown it is appropriate to compile a kind of “balance sheet”. When the lockdown was announced, Pres Ramaphosa made it clear that protecting lives against Covid 19 was paramount: a position he reiterated when prolonging the lockdown.

For the ANC Government, all other considerations weigh less and may be sacrificed. Mutating from a supreme commander in military camouflage uniform rallying his troops to “kill the virus” to a pope like appearance during Easter sympathizing with the population for carrying the heavy cross, almost like Simon of Cyrene, Ramaphosa has been lauded all around as “bold” and “presidential”. The few voices that since the beginning have argued that severe restrictions that limit fundamental freedoms would fuel poverty and unemployment, were brushed aside as being both inhumane and wrong.

To date it is uncertain whether the lockdown, the wide application of Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine in SA or any ther factor has contributed to the (still) low infection rate in South Africa. What is dead certain is that the economy (already in a critical condition prior to the appearance of Covid 19) has been rushed into ICU to a position close to the door where the dead are wheeled out to the morgue.

Read EOSA’s proposals on how Government can assist SMEs by cutting CIT and exempting those with a turnover below R2.5 million from VAT.

Government has, as yet, to indicate its estimates of the economic impact of the lockdown measures, e.g.:

the decline in VAT receipts;
the decline in CIT (and for sole proprietors, the decline in personal income tax);
the additional costs of demands on the UIF;
the additional costs of deploying the military and the police at the current levels;
the cost of measures to support the informal traders, small enterprises and other assistance measures to support businesses;
the support measures to assist businesses in the hospitality industry;
how these would impact on the budget deficit and what the implications are for government debt.

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Anti-business, Central planning, Cities, Developmental state, Differentiated products, Economic freedom, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Emigration/Immigration, Enterprise density, Enterprise friendly environment, Enterprise regularities, Enterprise richness, Entrepreneurial space, Export-led growth, Free State, Immigration/Emigration, KwaZulu-Natal, Large towns, Municipal efficiency, Population size, Predictive capabilities, Spontaneous order, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), Trading services, Urban economy and growth

The City of Surreal Ramaphosa on the banks of the Rubicon

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

Cyril Ramaphosa’s vision of “a first post-apartheid city with skyscrapers, schools, universities and factories” (if implemented) has all the potential of becoming a disastrous social engineering experiment wasting resources on a massive scale. Not because the idea of a new city is wrong per se, but simply because the president is ideologically wedded to state-led development, holding a very negative view of the role of the private sector.

Ramaphosa doesn’t consider the private sector as efficient or more effective than the public sector, despite the fact that State-owned enterprises are mismanaged, bankrupt and a drag on economic development with Denel and the SABC even struggling to meet salary commitments.

Peas of the same pod

The creation of such a city is, in the Ramaphosa framework, not a vision of dynamic economic growth, but an ideological blinkered perspective of how government can improve society. Ramaphosa and all the social engineers within the ANC are, in that sense, not far from the approach of Hendrik Verwoerd. The National Party was, just like the ANC, a force pursuing transformation through prescription and limitation of choices.

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Anti-poor, Cities, CITIES, TOWNS AND SETTLEMENTS, Construction services, Consumer-led development, Demographic-entrepreneurial relationships, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Enterprise regularities, Enterprise research, data and statistics, ENTERPRISE SECTORS, Entrepreneurial space, Local economic development (LED), Population size, Predictive capabilities, Pro-poor strategies, Trading services, Urban economy and growth

Pro-poor LED fails our cities, towns & the poor: Enterprises of the right kind generate city growth

Johannes Wessels
@johannesEOSA1

There is an intriguing symbiosis between cities and towns on the one hand and enterprises on the other. As the world population urbanise, so are business activities.

Physicist Geoffrey West in his “Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies” says based on city growth one can state precisely what will happen with the number of businesses in that city: a doubling of population does not require a doubling of grocery stores or filling stations, economies of scale kick in in a predictable manner. The reverse is also true.

Unfortunately, South Africa’s economic and enterprise development policies and strategies ignore these predictable realities. In addition, LED plans by municipalities in the main demonstrate a lack of understanding of what drives development.

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Construction services, Culture and development, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Informal businesses, Small enterprises, Small towns

Creating jobs and reducing poverty: why not enable the informal sector properly?

Author: Frederick Fourie

President Cyril Ramaphosa aims to set the country on a new path of growth, employment and transformation. Key to this are action plans for employment creation, to be deliberated at a jobs summit.

The South African Informal Sector: Providing jobs, reducing poverty A new edited volume, published by HSRC Press, flags the importance of explicitly addressing the informal sector in such initiatives, given the key role it plays in providing paid employment and reducing poverty. The book is based on research done in the Research Project for Employment, Income Distribution and Inclusive Growth (REDI3x3).

This research shows unambiguously that the informal sector is an important source of employment (and of paid employment), with a growing propensity to employ. Regrettably, for many decades the sector has remained forgotten or, at best, in the margins of economic analysis and policy consciousness. Many policy makers appear to group it together with formal SMMEs. Such an approach risks missing key elements of the ‘forgotten’ world of informal enterprises – their potential, the constraints they face, their particular vulnerability, and the policy support they need to be viable and self-standing.

How many jobs are created in the informal sector?

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Agriculture, CITIES, TOWNS AND SETTLEMENTS, Demographic-entrepreneurial relationships, Eastern Cape, Enterprise richness, Small towns, Tourism & hospitality services, Town resilience

The resilience of some small towns in the Karoo

A new article in the Journal of Arid Environments (see reference below) examines the ‘Small Town Paradox’ in eight small towns in the Eastern Cape Karoo. Normalised data (enterprise numbers per thousand residents) and estimates of enterprise richness were used in the comparisons. Willowmore, Steytlerville and Jansenville outperformed Aberdeen, Hofmeyr, Steynsburg, Venterstad and Pearston in terms of total enterprises per 1000 residents as well as enterprises per 1000 residents in the tourism & hospitality services and agricultural products and services sectors. In fact, in some measures these towns even outperformed the larger towns of Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Somerset East and Middelburg. Over some seven decades, the enterprise richness of Willowmore, Steytlerville and Jansenville increased (like those of the larger towns) whereas the enterprise richness of the other five small towns decreased. Hausmann et al. (2017) postulated that productive knowledge is a main determinant of the wealth/poverty of nations. I think this is also true for towns and used enterprise richness as a proxy for the levels of productive knowledge in the towns.

The resilience of towns is now a hot scientific topic. It refers to the ability of towns to respond successfully to adverse changes. Some do it well and some not; hence the ‘Small Town Paradox’. The decline of agriculture, particularly wool farming, in the Karoo stressed many Karoo towns. The study was done to determine if resilience was present in the Eastern Cape Karoo. It was.

The article demonstrates two important issues: 1. There are useful measures whereby the strengths/weaknesses of the entrepreneurial development of South African towns can be compared. 2. Productive knowledge is probably an important component of the resilience of South African towns.

References

Toerien, DF (2018) The ‘Small Town Paradox’ and towns of the Eastern Cape Karoo, South Africa. Journal of Arid Environments. Available free of charge for a limited period at:
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1WwV0Vu7-m4sz

Hausmann, R, Hidalgo, CA, Bustos, S, Coscia, M, Chung, S, Jiminez, J, Simoes, A & Yildirim, MA. (2017) The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity. Center for International Development, Harvard University.