The State of the Nation nutshell note

I have whipped through the State of the Nation address while Jacob Zuma is just getting started. My initial impression is good, maybe even very good …. but maybe there has just been so much bad news and poor performance that any detailed and thoughtful stuff from government is likely to impress me …

Here are some bits and pieces:

As always the address was long on the broad brush, leaving the details to ministerial budget votes over the next few weeks.

However, there were interesting bits:

First a claim that no-one appears to be believing …. I will have to check these figures and see how they arrived at them:

We are pleased to announce that by the end of December, we had created more than 480 000 public works job opportunities, which is 97% of the target we had set.

More money for public infrastructure – power and transport

Over the next three years government will spend R846 billion on public infrastructure.

One of the most favourable public expenditure/infrastructure statements was:

Among other things, this will look at the participation of independent power producers, and protecting the poor from rising electricity prices.

We will establish an independent system operator, separate from Eskom Holdings.

Money to subsidise the employment of first time young workers

Proposals will be tabled to subsidise the cost of hiring younger workers, to encourage firms to take on inexperienced staff.

He announced a plan to hold departments accountable:

The Ministers who are responsible for a particular outcome, will sign a detailed Delivery Agreement with the President.

It will outline what is to be done, how, by whom, within what time period and using what measurements and resources.

Very concrete education targets:

We aim to increase the pass rate for these tests from the current average of between 35 and 40% to at least 60% by 2014.

Results will be sent to parents to track progress.

In addition, each of our 27 000 schools will be assessed by officials from the Department of Basic Education.

This will be recorded in an auditable written report.

We aim to increase the number of matric students who are eligible for university admission to
175 000 a year by 2014.

Brutal admission on certain health failures:

We must confront the fact that life expectancy at birth, has dropped from 60 years in 1994 to just below 50 years today.

We are therefore making interventions to lower maternal mortality rates, to reduce new HIV infections and to effectively treat HIV and tuberculosis.

Policing:

We are implementing plans to increase the number of police men and women by 10% over the next three years.

Concrete stuff about housing and mobilising private sector funds:

We are working to upgrade well-located informal settlements and provide proper service and land tenure to at least 500 000 households by 2014.

We plan to set aside over 6 000 hectares of well-located public land for low income and affordable housing.

A key new initiative will be to accommodate people whose salaries are too high to get government subsidies, but who earn too little to qualify for a normal bank mortgage.

We will set up a guarantee fund of R1 billion to incentivise the private banking and housing sector, to develop new products to meet this housing demand.