South Africa has a strong partnership with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday.
"SA has benefited from OECD policy inputs on competition policies and practices, technology and innovation, tax policy and administration and agriculture," Manuel said.
He was speaking at the release of the OECD's first economic assessment of South Africa.
Secretary-General of the OECD Angel Gurria said that the organization had started work on the economic assessment as soon as it had decided on what it termed an "enhanced engagement relationship" with South Africa.
While South Africa was not a member of the OECD, it had an ongoing relationship with the organization and "enhanced engagement" could lead to possible membership, Gurria said.
"We felt that we needed South Africa to be working with us so we tried to get to know them and in future we'll be producing regular statistics on the country," Gurria said.
In future, the OECD and South Africa would convene a high-level meeting -- at least annually -- in order to assess their progress in building a partnership and to plan future steps.
Gurria congratulated Manuel on stabilizing public finances, but said that challenges for South Africa remained.
"The people who were supposed to benefit most from democracy are still lagging behind," Gurria said.
He also referred to South Africa's high rate of unemployment and said that part of the gap between per capita income between South Africa and the OECD countries was due to labor productivity.
Source:Xinhua
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