Reserve Bank can't do much about unemployment‚ says governor.

Image by: Photographer: Dean Hutton/Bloomberg

South African Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago says one of the main contributing factors to the country’s high unemployment rate is that many people do not live close enough to where job opportunities are.

And the bad news is that the central bank is not well placed to solve the country’s “terrible unemployment problem”‚ which has lasted at least for two decades with its monetary policy.

Kganyago was speaking on Tuesday night at a lecture on monetary policy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Westville campus‚ where he also addressed whether the Reserve Bank should aim to reduce the unemployment rate‚ currently at 26.5%.

He said one of the tactics was to keep inflation down‚ but it was difficult for the Reserve Bank to specifically target unemployment.



By Bongani Mthethwa.
Full story at Times Live.