Nicola Viegi on the South African economic response to the Coronavirus: policies and protection

Nicola Viegi, Deputy Director of ERSA, talks with Margaux G on the South African economic response to the Coronavirus. Health intervention and household support is the first priority, but policies should also protect the integrity of supply chains and the integrity of labour contracts, even with temporary reductions of wages and public guarantees. The partial freeze of the economy allows speeding up infrastructure maintenance and renewal. The bureaucracy around business licensing and exporting should be simplified to the point of irrelevance. To finance these interventions, South Africa needs instruments that are efficient and coherent with its long term objectives of […]