agricultural sector. on average, public sector employment fell by 4, 1 per cent in 2000. non - agricultural private sector employment fell by 2, 0 per cent from 1999 to 2000. the findings of the september 2000 labour force survey, which measures total employment and unemployment and tracks the trends in the labour market, concluded that 25, 8 per cent of the economically active population was unemployed. wage growth presents a mixed picture. nominal wage growth in the private sector amounted to 8, 8 per cent in 2000. this is the lowest rate of increase in the past 30 years. however, public sector pay increases outstripped the private sector. on average, public sector employees earned 9, 4 per cent more in 2000 than in 1999. but, on the positive side, labour productivity has been rising in the formal non - agricultural sectors. this is partly due to efficiencies gained from new technologies. on average labour productivity growth reached 6, 0 per cent in 2000 – the highest rate of increase in thirty years. as a result of the robust growth in labour productivity and moderate increases in remuneration per worker, the growth in nominal unit labour costs in the manufacturing sector slowed down to a year - on - year rate of just 0, 8 per cent in 2000. this has important positive implications for price stability and inflation. 4. prices the south african reserve bank introduced inflation targeting last year. within this framework, we target cpix inflation, which is headline consumer inflation excluding mortgage costs. this measure of inflation must fall between 6 and 3 per cent on average in 2002. in assessing the inflation outlook, we look at many aspects. these include global oil prices, which has been a main driver of inflation recently, the exchange rate of the rand, private sector demand and nominal unit labour costs, among other factors. during last year there was a significant rise in prices because of pressure from food and energy prices. at our monetary policy committee meeting in the middle of june we reduced the repo rate by 100 basis points. this caused the commercial banks, in turn, to drop their consumer interest rates. the repo rate decision was based on a number of factors. among these were clear indications that consumer and production price inflation was slowing. measured from quarter to quarter, seasonally adjusted and annualised, cpix inflation came down from 8, 8 per cent in the second quarter of 2000 to 6, 1 per cent in the first quarter of 2001. the moderation in price increases was mainly the result

lessons from the economics of populism governor lesetja kganyago ’ s address at the absip national conference johannesburg friday 19 october at the end of the road one cannot avoid wondering whether the mistakes of past populist regimes can be internalized by policymakers, politicians, and the population at large and, thus, be avoided in the future. quite clearly, [ history ] suggest [ s ] that, in general, there is very little capacity ( or willingness ) of learning from other countries ’ experiences. indeed, one of the most striking regularities of these episodes is the insistence with which the engineers of the populist programs argue that their circumstances are unique and thus immune from historical lessons from other nations. - rudiger dornbusch & sebastian edwards my speech today is about populism, about its appeal and its weaknesses. populism wins supporters in part because it speaks to ordinary people about real problems – problems other leaders can be too embarrassed or nervous to confront. for instance, when hugo chavez attacked corruption and inequality in venezuela, he wasn ’ t just making trouble. he was confronting some longstanding problems of venezuelan society. but populism also has a bad side : it pretends there are easy solutions, even where there are none – where the problems are in fact very difficult. often the easy solutions have unintended effects, impacts that populists ignore or are unaware of. it is these unintended effects that usually end up hurting the people those easy solutions were meant to help. populist governments tend to be especially weak on economics, which is a common reason why their projects fail. in my speech today, i will explore what it is about economics that populism get wrong, and what we can learn from that. the knowledge i will detail is mostly drawn from latin america, a place where populism has flourished over the past century. this experience is relevant for us because these economies closely resemble ours. in particular, they are middle income countries with high levels of inequality. of course, every country is different. but the populist experience has been so similar, across so many countries and time periods, that we can pull together a few clear lessons relevant to our times and circumstances. economic populism starts with deep dissatisfaction. 1 too much unemployment, too much inequality, too much poverty. the populist solution is to start spending – push as much demand as possible into the economy, without consideration of constraints