Hon Speaker, Hon Deputy President, Ministers and Deputy Ministers present here, hon members, as we introduce the debate on the proposed budget framework for 2013, we do so consciously aware that the global economic environment remains uncertain, with most countries facing a common threat of challenges with specific grievances that differ and vary from country to country.
Most emerging economies today suffer from a common economic deficit and the confluence of external or exogenous factors and internal or domestic economic challenges that are characterised by slow growth, unemployment, poverty and inequality between the rich and the poor.
It is this growing social distance that undermines global social cohesion and that undermines the ability of nations to attain social cohesion and overcome economic barriers. Communities need to be assisted to overcome social and economic barriers in order to achieve this social cohesion that we talk about. Labour needs skills to function in a global economic environment, but it also needs leadership to champion and protect their interests on the factory floor. Governments, the world over, need policies to combat the triple challenge of an economic system that continues to produce youth unemployment, poverty and inequality.
While we understand the extent that the external challenges impose on many developing nations, resulting in the failure of developed economies particularly in the USA and Europe, the challenges are underpinned by our unique circumstances, in our case the confluence of both exogenous and endogenous factors.
The recently released 2011 Census results aptly depict or capture the challenges we have to grapple with and respond to in this Medium-Term Budget Policy Framework. The Census results tell us a story - a journey we have traversed and travelled as a people to advance the nation for it to have a just, fair and equitable economic system in order to create a nonracial, democratic and prosperous society.
Census 2011, again, tells us a story of an economic system that is less efficient in the redistribution of wealth, an economic system that has failed the majority of our people ...