The New Growth Path [PDF] is a broad framework that sets out a vision and identifies key areas where jobs can be created.
The new growth path is intended to address unemployment, inequality and poverty in a strategy that is principally reliant on creating a significant increase in the number of new jobs in the economy, mainly in the private sector.
The new growth path sets a target of creating five million jobs in the next ten years. This target is projected to reduce unemployment from 25% to 15%. Critically, this employment target can only be achieved if the social partners and government work together to address key structural challenges in the economy.
These challenges include:
- bottlenecks and backlogs in logistics, energy infrastructure and skills, which constrains economic growth and raises costs
- low domestic savings and inadequate levels of investment in the productive sectors of the economy
- economic concentration and price collusion in key parts of the economy which raises costs and limits innovation and new enterprise development
- an uncompetitive currency that limits employment growth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture and tourism and
- a persistent balance-of-trade deficit funded with short-term capital inflows attracted largely by high interest rates by international standards.
