South Africa's 'new growth path' (NGP) plan aims to create 5 million jobs by 2020 and bring about a new more inclusive, labour-absorbing and efficient economy.1 The proposal is to achieve this through a mix of direct government job creation, social-democratic consensus building and macroeconomic, labour and industrial policies. It is a vision rather than a plan or a projection. Although a few specific objectives are listed (e.g. creating youth brigades in which a million young adults are to be provided with training and work experience), the NGP mainly takes the form of tabling a broad set of objectives (e.g. a more competitive, labour-absorbing, fast-growing, knowledge-intensive green economy which produces millions of decent jobs while reducing poverty and inequality) alongside an 'if then' commentary: if this vision is to be achieved then we need a stronger more efficient state, appropriately targeted policies, co-ordinated monetary and fiscal policies, an improved supply of skilled labour, co-operative partnerships with labour and capital, national will to accept some wage restraint and government mobilisation of savings and direction of investment etc. Precisely how important the various elements are is never spelled out.

What is the appropriate response to this document? One option is to ask for more details and greater clarification. But as the drafters do not appear to have a detailed background plan (the contingent nature of economic policy formulation is noted at various points), a more productive approach is probably to concentrate on the logic of the vision, pointing to some of the key problems, trade-offs and requirements which have not been specified, and to ask questions about how realistic the objectives are given our current position.