Lessons from pandemic

SA’s homegrown supply constraints continue to drive up prices.

- Ina Opperman

South Africa still lives.with the economic shocks that followed the pandemic. Labour, services and goods markets were subjected to severe dislocation and strain, prices have surged and debt levels remain very high. What economic lessons were learned?

South African Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago said last week the pandemic shocks impacted widely on economic growth, industrial sectors, job creation and household incomes.

He was speaking in a guest lecture at the University of the Free State on monetary policy and inequality: the post-pandemic experience.

Citing high-level lessons from the pandemic, Kganyago said the first was that while there are large economic shocks that must be offset with policy, we need to be more aware of the long-term consequences.

The pandemic needed large fiscal and monetary responses, but where there is little policy space, policy must be agile to avoid the problems that emerge.