[lbo-talk] S. Africa plans second nuclear power plant

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Mar 26 07:01:33 PST 2006


Patrick Bond wrote:


>Growth is not 'rapid' (since 1994 it barely exceeded the population
>growth rate, itself decimated by AIDS); neoliberalism here meant
>virtually no investments/upgrading by parastatals or other state
>agencies. If anyone wants data, let me know.

Here's what the World Bank's World Development Indicators database has to say. Average annual growth rate in per capita GDP for SA, 1994-2004, in constant rand: 1.2%. If you use 1990 as the base year, the performance is much worse: 0.3%. Since 1990 and 1994 - base year doesn't matter much here - investment has averaged under 17% of GDP; for China, it's been 39%; India, 23%; and the US, 18%. So, SA is investing less than a rich mature economy when it should be investing more like China & India.

Doug



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