Speaking at an ANC press briefing at Luthuli House the party’s spokesperson and national executive committee member, Dakota Legoeteon said: “By public ownership of the Reserve Bank we mean that that public investment companies like the PIC, the IDC, like stokvels that we have, like agricultural unions, like taxi associations, individual burial societies, through a share scheme to get access to the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) so that whatever we get as income and revenue must first and foremost help South Africans.”
Legoeteon added that the bank is currently 60% owned by foreigners, which meant that most revenue or shares growth from the bank ended up leaving the country.
Quoted by BusinessTech, Legoeteon said: “Even though we accept direct foreign investment – to a certain extent we must talk about South Africans owning their own public assets as part of us broadening economic participation and economic ownership.”
In the run-up to this year’s South African 2019 elections, at a pre-Davos conference in January, president Cyril Ramaphosa said that governing party had asked the central bank to broaden its focus to boost employment and economic growth.
As part of the ANC’s election manifesto, the party called for the SARB to ‘pursue a flexible monetary policy regime, aligned with the objectives of the second phase of transition’.
