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What matters


right now is how fast we can grow,


the quality of that


growth, how inclusive we can make it and how we


can mitigate risks to arrive at


this desired outcome.


implies a cyclical slow-down risk. After a ripping time for the past nine years, the markets are now expensive across most asset classes and in most regions. Whether, or how, we manage the cyclical economy is no longer the real issue. It is time to stop “fi ddling” and get real. The real issues are structural and unless they are solved, we will be entering a challenging phase in our political history. I do not say this for melodramatic effect; this view is forged on the back of hundreds of years of economic history. Things which cannot continue must stop, or – at best – die slowly to make way for a new order. A re-birth, if you will.


In our launch publication of Gradient, the central theme was the ethos, practical notion and business strategy framing tool of “shared growth”. This approach is increasingly the source of a company’s competitive advantage and the manner in which it seeks to create value. This value must extend beyond simply benefi ting its shareholders and positively affect the communities in which it operates. This is a more sustainable approach than profi t maximisation, or market fundamentalist approaches that presume greater welfare through “enlightened self-interest” alone.


We started at that point deliberately, in the belief that we could promote a way of doing business that was more sustainable and which would increasingly produce incredible results and impact throughout the world. Looking beyond Absa’s shared growth commitment, two great examples of hugely successful fi rms operating from a shared growth platform are Tencent and Alibaba. Both are new age- and technology-driven and both boast enormous ecosystems deeply networked into communities and suppliers. Both have become national champions for China in their race to be the world’s largest economy and a challenge to Western hegemony, personifi ed by the United States.


While shared growth remains something to embed and absorb into corporate operations, we believe that it is equally important to go back one step and engage on the more fundamental, if not existential, issues. In the case of South Africa’s economy this requires looking at the issue of transformation in order to address the country’s monumental challenges and defi cits: poverty, inequality, unemployment, low savings rate, sovereign rating, fi scal and trade defi cits, human capital development, crime and a host of other welfare issues.


Addressing these requires growth


There are valid questions about the various metrics for measuring growth, its composition, formulation and impact. However, what is unequivocal from more than 100 years of empirical data is that countries growing at higher-than-average rates for sustained periods (typically decades) have a huge impact in improving their societies. This improvement is not just economic, but fi lters through to almost every other dimension. The obvious case is China, whose sustained growth for almost four decades (5-15% GDP growth rates since 1980; 6.1-6.5% per capita growth rates since 1980) has improved it on almost every front, barring environmental or human rights indices.


Singapore, Germany and Japan would be classic post- Second World War examples of the same. The United States is a prime example from the fi rst half of the 20th


century.


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