Hon Chairperson, unlike the dedicated officials of the department who are here today, I'm going to be a clock-watcher for this speech.
Chair, I appreciate the Minister's focus on the responsibilities of business, but I would like to remind him that businesses in South Africa are playing on a field where government makes most of the rules. If we want our economy to grow, I would suggest we need to announce a plan to free up those businesses to hire more workers and scale up their output.
The finance ministers in Brazil and India, Chair, framed their entire budgets for this year as ambitious plans to drive growth. It's unfortunate that growth was relegated to one of the bullets on the first page of our Budget. I think what South Africa is looking for is an ambitious comprehensive plan in the Budget to achieve our growth objectives.
Nevertheless, as far as global rankings go, the members of this House will have become used to our country's appearing at the top of the tables in areas like financial regulation, national accounts and equity markets. In the 2011 World Economic Forum global competitiveness rankings, we ranked number one for the regulation of security exchanges and strength of auditing and reporting standards. Our budget process won first place in the 2010 Open Budget Survey.
Members will also have become used to South Africa's appearing towards the bottom of rankings where education, labour market flexibility, productivity and crime are concerned. In these World Economic Forum, WEF, competitiveness rankings, of 142 countries we ranked fourth last in the quality of maths and science education, and flexibility of wage determination, and third last in hiring and firing practices. In the World Bank's businesses rankings we came 144th out of 183 countries for trading across borders. Chairperson, it's not hard to see why we ranked so low on these last sets of measures. The ANC-led government has failed to hold teachers accountable, reform the labour market and engage properly with Africa.
Perhaps the more interesting question is why a medium-sized, middle-income country on the bottom tip of the least developed continent ranked so high on the first set? The answer is, I think, primarily because National Treasury has done a decade and a half of hard work in drawing down the apartheid era debts and introducing a world-class national budgeting system and strong regulatory structures for our economy. That is how, on Monday this week, the rating agency Moody's could commend National Treasury for a macroeconomic policy framework that has been stable and coherent for more than a decade.
On the flip side, where South Africa is failing it is often because key reforms, advocated or supported by National Treasury, have had their implementation blocked. Members will recall the piece of the Finance Minister, published in March this year, where he argued that labour market reforms can directly improve employment by providing flexibility and the right incentives to work, hire workers, develop skills and become more productive.
This is not a radical proposal - it's simply joining the dots! Our country regularly ranks amongst the worst in the world for labour market flexibility and hiring and firing practices, but for as long as anyone can remember, we've had the highest unemployment rate out of 58 countries tracked weekly by The Economist. Chairperson Mufamadi, unemployment is a global phenomenon, but we are still number one on that list. The link between those two facts is clear and indisputable.
Members will also recall, unfortunately, the response from Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi to the Finance Minister's proposals. He said that he hoped President Zuma would give the Minister a call to tell him to stop sending out these messages about labour flexibility." So much for that idea.
Chairperson, the blocking of critical reforms by Cosatu and the elements of the ANC aligned with them is not a new thing. Our populist friends love to talk about how the Growth, Employment and Redistribution, Gear, strategy of 1996 failed. The truth is that those reforms proposed in the Gear strategy that were implemented were a resounding success. Budget reform, consistent monetary policy and fiscal deficit reduction, amongst others, helped us get to the top world rankings on all of those key financial measures.
We often forget, however, that Gear also proposed flexibility in collective bargaining, the restructuring of state assets, a massive infrastructure programme and a relaxation of exchange controls. These reforms were all blocked, either by Cosatu or other leftist elements or by the widespread incapacity of the state.
While the former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel was no stranger to key policies being blocked, this Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, is in a situation that is significantly worse. Where Minister Manuel had the odd policy impeded, he got his way nine times out of ten. Minister Gordhan finds almost all of his new proposals politically railroaded by a rampant Cosatu.
The union federation's influence began to rise in 2009 when President Zuma carved up critical parts of the responsibility for economic policy and government and handed them over to a key Cosatu leader, Ebrahim Patel, in exchange for their support at Polokwane. It is still on the rise today because the President finds himself having to trade political concessions to his unelected alliance partners for their support at Mangaung. Alarmingly, it now appears that Cosatu's rising bargaining power right at the top of government has begun to erode the hard work done by Treasury to establish that stable and coherent macroeconomic framework.
The union federation negotiated double-digit increases ... [Interjections.]