Putting value for money at the core of all public procurement and reducing VAT to 11.5% are the core recommendations of the second paper in the IRR’s Blueprint for Growth series, Slash Waste, Cut Taxes, published today.
The last campaign I ran at the IRR was to scrap BEE at Eskom, particularly in procurement, in order to combat load-shedding. A new working paper from Harvard’s ‘Growth Lab’ has come to the same conclusion: if you want to put the lights back on, cut BEE out of SOE purchases.
The signs of accelerating state failure are pretty much everywhere: from the potholes, the urban decay, crimes that are not prosecuted, the lack of security, the implosion of state enterprises, to the power cuts and water supply interruptions.