Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Geordin Hill-Lewis MP.
On behalf of the Democratic Alliance, I convey our congratulations to the Governor, Deputy Governors and the professional staff of the South African Reserve Bank on the occasion of the Bank’s centenary.
As we celebrate this centenary, we recommit ourselves to the firm defence of the SARB’s independence against all those who would seek to undermine it.
South Africans can rightly feel proud of the Reserve Bank. While so many other institutions in our democracy have faltered, or have been deliberately hollowed out, the SARB has stood as a consistent champion for sensible economic policy.
It is an institution marked by its commitment to excellence and independence, demonstrating the very best of what our country can do.
Of course, it was not always so. For many decades, monetary policy was deployed in aid of an isolationist siege economy, cut off from the world and from economic best-practice. Now the Bank faces pressures of a not-too-dissimilar kind, as populists try to capture the SARB for their own destructive political ends.
It has also all too often had to carry the burden for irresponsible fiscal policy by the government of the day.
Against all of these forces, it has stood as a bulwark.
Future prosperity for South Africa depends on strong independent institutions like the SARB applying the best evidence to formulate stable and predictable policy.
May the SARB continue in this important work over the next 100 years.
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