While there are political sensitivities about bringing highly skilled émigrés and retirees back into mainstream employment in South Africa – because these will more often than not be white people – there is a growing realisation that this is a critical step in accelerating and sustaining economic growth.

Delivering the keynote address at the 2006 Chemical Industries Seta (Chieta) conference, the Department of Trade and Industry’s Roydon Frost said “there is such a dearth of skills in this country that we need to do whatever we can to address the problem”.

The Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) conducted a critical skills audit in conjunction with the Department of Trade and Industry, and they came up with a number of initiatives.

“These included streamlining immigration, bringing retired persons back into mainstream employment and encouraging skilled South Africans living abroad to return to the country to contribute to its development.

“This is not to undermine broad-based black economic empowerment. The reality is we need to harness whatever high-end skills and resources are available to us in order to uplift the broader base of the population.

“This is the only way we will overcome income imbalances and achieve a higher growth trajectory,” said Frost, deputy-director for economic research and policy implementation at the dti.

Jipsa attempts to determine where skills deficiencies are blocking the implementation of government’s R372 Billion over-arching medium term infrastructure development plan, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (Asgisa).

But, how far has Jipsa gone in terms of attracting foreign skills, luring émigrés back to South Africa or getting retirees to mentor younger, less experienced professionals?

“We are still in the stage of rhetoric … I’m not sure whether a strategy has been implemented or even outlined,” said Frost.

“It’s clear when you compare South Africa’s growth performance to that of its developing-country peers over the past decade or so, that it has been mediocre. I think that the World Bank was quite generous when it described this growth as ‘solid but unspectacular’.

“Clearly we’ve not gone far enough but at least a start has been made.” Frost said there were a number of key constraints that hindered achievement of higher growth. Some were more relevant to the chemical industries sector than others.

Among the most pertinent to the sector are barriers to entry, competition and the shortage of suitably skilled labour. Frost also identified “deficiencies in state organisation, capacity and strategic leadership” as a constraint to growth, saying it was “fundamental to the success of Asgisa that government improves its institutional capacity and co-ordination”.

Of all the constraints, the lack of skills was often seen as a “make or break issue and that is why it is receiving special attention within Asgisa in terms of Jipsa. While initiatives had been developed to overcome these constraints, he said “strategies and projects are only as good as their implementation. The sectoral cluster projects are specifically geared towards accountability and effective implementation.

“Each project has a dedicated inter-departmental project manager, representation by all three spheres of government (national, provincial and local), clear timelines and resources. It’s going to be very difficult for project leaders to hide.

“Implementation scorecards will be filled out quarterly to ensure ongoing monitoring and evaluation within the economic cluster of government departments.” Referring to the long-term sustainability of the economy, Frost said one of the dti’s biggest concerns was that production had not increased apace with domestic consumption. “A lot of our recent economic growth has been people buying more stuff and going into debt.

“This has largely been supplemented by foreign funds flowing into the country. The problem is that this is, in a sense, ‘hot’ money: if foreign investors lose interest or confidence in South Africa, the funds flow can be reversed at a click of a mouse. “We need to build the productive side of the economy in order to create more jobs … especially for people who are unskilled.”