Hon Speaker, hon President and colleagues, Cope agrees with the hon President that creating decent jobs, supporting African development, fostering South-South partnerships and placing Mandela Day on the calendar are very important objectives to be attained.
On the other hand, the hon President's speech was an inadequate response to the recession our country is experiencing at present. The recession has been a reality for more than nine months now and the hon President has not given the country a clear and detailed response of how a turnaround in the economy will be effected. The plans which are mooted by government with its social partners look as though they are aimed at simply avoiding retrenchment, rather than at lifting the economy to a healthy plane. In the words of the President, and I quote:
We take as our starting point the framework for South Africa's response to the international economic crisis, concluded by government, labour and business in February this year. We must act now to minimise the impact of this downturn on those most vulnerable.
We reiterate that this is inadequate. The most glaring omission in the President's speech, however, related to what exactly the new planning commission, under the leadership of Minister Trevor Manuel, was going to be doing. In our view, this will become a missed opportunity unless the hon President remedies this omission in his closing reply. Are we going to have a top-heavy bureaucracy in our country in which paper shuffling will be the order of the day? Will government's plan of getting Ministries to work in a cohesive manner unfold into a gigantic battle for turf? Will this new mountain bring forth a mole? This country needs an assurance that more government is going to mean efficiency, cost- effectiveness and delivery. We shall be watching with great interest. [Interjections.]
The President also indicated that the Industrial Development Corporation, IDC, had developed a programme to fund companies in distress. [Interjections.]