According to the latest forecasts, the South African economy should record improved real growth in 2000. Real growth for 1999 was 1,9%, and forecasts point to real growth of approximately 3,0% for the current year. Before we celebrate this improvement too wholeheartedly, we must ask ourselves whether this growth performance will be sufficient to enable South Africans to obtain their economic freedom following the successful political transformation post-1994. It must be borne in mind that political freedom cannot satisfy a population that does not also see an improvement in its economic lot.

In the case of South Africa, a real growth rate of 3% will not be sufficient to satisfy all the needs - and especially the social needs - of the population in the next decade. A growth path enabling us to satisfy most of the needs of the population requires a real growth rate of 4% to 6% over a number of years to create a firm financial and economic base. This kind of growth cannot be achieved by focusing only on the domestic market - its buying power is just too limited. To satisfy the economic needs of our population we will have to embark on a drive to sell our products, services, skills and expertise on the world markets. We must also be able to stand our own against any foreign businesses in the domestic markets. Only if we succeed in beating the competition both at home and abroad, can we overcome the limitations to our ability to achieve economic freedom - the only real freedom - for our people.

Some of the more serious limitations we face are linked to our balance of payments situation and our lack of skilled labour.

Our balance of payments often limits our growth potential because we run up a large deficit on our foreign trade and then find it difficult to finance this deficit with inflows of foreign capital. The problem arises because we start importing too much from the international markets in relation to what we earn with our exports to these markets. Although this is quite a normal situation for a developing country like ours, we must turn it around if we wish to achieve stronger real growth.

One way to do this, would be to beneficiate more of the raw mining and agricultural products that we export so that we can earn more from more expensive exports. However, achieving this is very expensive and will necessitate large inflows of foreign capital.

Another possibility is to produce more manufactured products with a higher value. Although we have plenty of scope for selling such products to the rest of Africa, this potential is still limited in comparison to the industrial capacity of the Far East.

A third option would be to attract many more international tourists to our country to enjoy its natural beauty while spending their dollars, yen and euros. We must also intensify our efforts to attract long-term foreign investment capital to the country and ensure that this money finds a safe investment home in South Africa. In our efforts to promote these two sources of foreign exchange, we should always bear in mind that we are in competition with the rest of the world. Both tourists and capital will only be attracted if they find our country a better destination than other parts of the world.

Unfortunately, South Africa suffers from a chronic lack of skilled labour in all spheres of its economy. This is not easy to rectify and is unlikely to change in the short term. It is evident that this lack is our most serious limitation to achieving sustained long-term economic growth.

Every institution and individual will have to take responsibility for enhancing South African skills to the utmost in an effort to improve the growth potential of the economy and all its people in the longer term. Let that be our vision for the next decade.

This article was written by special request.