For a nation that should be striving for economic progress to alleviate poverty and create jobs, South Africa has too many public holidays.
Therefore, the revision of public holidays should be widely welcomed.
Just last week Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said the pace of growth was completely inadequate to deal with the challenges facing the South African economy.
While his Treasury expects 2.7% growth this year, rising to 3.8% next year, many economists think even that’s too optimistic.
He is on record as saying that we need 7% in order to start making inroads on unemployment.
There’s much catching up to do. A sure-fire way to stifle productivity and growth is to keep interrupting productive time with holidays, never mind all the strikes that also bedevil our economy. Invariably people add a day or two on either side of public holidays, compounding the disruption.
In December 2011, BDO South Africa, a regional association of accounting firms, said an extra public holiday would result in an estimated R7 billion loss in turnover.
At the time, BDO South Africa chief operating office Olivier Barbeau, said: “South Africans typically enjoy 13 paid public holidays a year. This, on the face of it, is comparable to other countries like the US, France and Singapore. But can we afford it? SA is still a developing economy with significantly high levels of unemployment. We have to compete globally with countries like China who have only four public holidays and this results in the erosion of the little global competitiveness we have.”
Fewer public holidays would be a good idea. However, in a country where most people profess to be Christian it would not be wise to forfeit the most significant religious days
