Green - but hardly fresh: the PEAC's 2025 Advisory Briefs

> The Presidential Economic Advisory Council appointed last year has released its January Advisory Briefs. In support of South Africa’s G20 leadership, the Council focused on both global and domestic aspects of the transition to a green economy and fiscal debt issues.  It has not yet brought its considerable expertise to bear on South Africa’s pressing investment, growth, employment and social development challenges.  South Africa’s second Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) has published the “Advisory Briefs” prepared for its inaugural meeting in January this year. As in the past, these have been posted many months in arrears, and do not reflect the council’s advice on the global trade and financial uncertainty of recent months. We are advised that the council met on 28 August and that it again discussed climate change financing issues and South Africa’s budget strategy, while also discussing informal sector employment.  Although the press release that accompanied the council’s January meeting indicated “the need to position South Africa for growth in a rapidly changing global environment,” the published briefs do not address the country’s investment, social development and employment challenges. They focus mainly on global and industrial policy aspects of the green transition, while also putting the spotlight on rising debt, fiscal policy, and low-cost administrative “fixes”.  The only other publication by the council so far this year has been a Business Day  opinion piece jointly drafted with the National Planning Commission and the Presidential Climate Change Commission that endorsed blended finance approaches to South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP). The JET-IP , approved by Cabinet in October 2022, is an ambitious R1.5 trillion proposal to mobilise domestic and international funding for South Africa’s energy transition, including investment in green hydrogen and electric vehicle production. Altho