'Hurdles to economic growth in policy arena'

Growing South Africa's economy is bound to be daunting as long as the major political players in the government of national unity pursue diametrically opposite economic policies.

- Eric Naki

This is the view of director of the Pan African Institute for Evidence and professor of practice at University of Johannesburg, Dr Pali Lehohla.

He added that SA lacked a poverty-reduction strategy to deal with endemic inequality.

Lehohla, the former statistician-general of SA, said building the economy under the current political environment might be harder than anticipated.

He said the policy contradictions between the ANC and the DA and the coalition as a whole could retard progress towards achieving real economic growth.

"Their economic policies are diametrically opposed.

They have economic policies for the DA and they have economic policies for the ANC, also.

The question is how do you harmonise those policies.

It's impossible," Lehohla said.