The National Development Plan (NDP), published in 2012, sets out a vision for where South Africa should be by 2030. The National Planning Commission also recently released a Review of the NDP, in which they confirm that the Plan is still a relevant roadmap. Acting Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, in the State of the Nation Address (SONA) debate last week reiterated the President’s invitation to South Africans to measure the performance of the Sixth Administration, speaking to the heightened focus on accountability and the President’s signing of performance agreements with his cabinet in October last year. But knowing where we want to go means little if we don’t have a clear vision of where we find ourselves at the moment. In the nine years since the publication of the NDP there has been no means of measuring where we actually are with achieving the goals. The Medium-Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) serves a different purpose: it guides the budgeting process and lists the resources and actions needed to achieve certain objectives. It does not report on developmental progress.
It is for this reason that the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) in collaboration with a network of partners, compiled a 30-page report to measure South Africa’s achievement of these development objectives. This report, depicting progress visually, shows progress in South Africa’s development in some areas, though outcomes have fallen short of the NDP’s aspirations on several key indicators. With the Annual NDP Assessment Report, the BER and its network of collaborators hope to contribute to the accelerated, and ultimately successful, implementation of the NDP as we traverse the journey to 2030.
Read the Business Day article by Helenya Fourie and Johann Kirsten about how South Africans can hold the government accountable with this annual assessment report.
