A RESEARCH paper by a trade and industry think-tank has echoed the urgent need to create more jobs in the country.

The paper, published by Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (Tips), showed a drop in employment across all industrial sectors except one from 1990 to 2001.

It examined the changing nature of the SA economy over that period and showed that the country was following a global trend with the services sector increasing its dominance of the local economy.

Although production was shifting to the services sector, the paper said this could not address the employment crisis.

The need to create jobs and to get SA on to a higher economic growth path was now firmly on the agenda of key decision-makers in the country.

The paper, entitled A Review of the Changing Composition of the SA Economy, said only the wholesale and retail trade sector showed any resistance to the trend to cut jobs measured from 1997 to 2001.

While this sector increased employment 1,7%, other sectors such as electricity, business services, community services (government), agriculture, manufacturing, transport, mining and construction all shed jobs.

When employment trends were measured from 1991 to 1996, jobs in community service increased 2,1% and business services rose 1,8%.

One area of concern raised in the paper was that investment in the manufacturing sector was lagging behind other industries. Despite this, manufacturing had increased its proportion of total exports from 13% between 1991 and 1996, to 21% between 1997 and 2001.

The paper called for more research to evaluate the effect of government policy on different sectors of the economy.

Jun 10 2003 07:35:58:000AM Larry Claasen Business Day 1st Edition