Chairperson, colleagues, on behalf of the IFP, I would like to congratulate the Minister, the Deputy Minister and the Chairperson of the Committee on their appointments. I must say, however, having listened to the Chair's input, which I enjoyed, I do think his quaint references to historical materialism and science sounded like a lot of "mumbo jumbo", not science. We can talk about that later.
I've got three minutes, so I have three points that I would like to raise. Firstly, the Minister referred in her corporate strategy "to the fact that we measure success by the level to which science and technology play a driving role in enhancing productivity, economic growth and socioeconomic development". I would agree with the Minister, but suggest that it's actually time to do some measuring. You will have noticed in the World Economic Forum, WEF, report last week that South Africa was ranked second in terms of Africa's most productive countries - Tunisia beat us. I would like to know whether we, as a country, know why Tunisia is ahead of us. Are we measuring it? Why are we second best and not first? Similarly, in respect of our contribution as science and technology to Gross Domestic Product, GDP, growth, this is a measurable thing. Do we know what the sector is contributing to economic growth, and if not, why not? If we look at our Technology Achievement Index, the last study I saw was conducted in 2001. That is the main measure by which we compare ourselves to whom we deem to be our competitors. Really, the question that I would like to ask is: Are we are doing enough, and are all the trends positive?
Secondly, regarding the share of our GDP we spend on research and development, we have reached or are about to reach the 1% target. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 1%. It is indeed manageable, but I want to highlight that from an international perspective - and the Minister said the same thing in respect of China and India, although without any figures - this figure is very low. In fact, the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development's, OECD, average is 2,1%. And if you look at certain countries, Sweden is 4,5%, Finland 3,5%, and Japan over 3%. So, we are way behind other countries. I would like to suggest, and I endorse the Minister's claim here, that we need to dramatically increase this figure. I think we should set the target at 2% over the next 10 years starting from 2010 so that by 2020 we could have a 2% spending figure, and it could be incrementally increased by 0,1% per annum until we get there. The point is that you don't gain knowledge of the economy by being timid in your spending.
Thirdly, I heard the Minister saying there are a number of initiatives designed to address our science, engineering and technology, SET, human capacity development problems, but there are a number of serious concerns that still remain. The one that I would like to refer to initially is the fact that there is a large cohort of aging science and technology practitioners about to go. What is being done to replace them? Another is the ratio of our full-time equivalent researchers to the population. For Africa it is just over two per thousand. If we look at competitive countries, we are not competitive. The best, Sweden, has nearly eleven per thousand. We are at two something, Sweden is eleven, Japan is ten, Norway is nine, France is seven and a half, and Russia is seven and a half. These people are spending vast amounts of money on human capital, we are not doing so.
If you look at our number of FET researchers ... [Interjections.] [Time expired.] [Applause.]