Speech by IAN PLENDERLEITH, Deputy Governor, South African Reserve Bank, to the ACTSA Corporate and Professional Dinner on 2 June 20051. Visitors to South Africa are encouraged to go on safari and see “the Big Five”. The big five are, indeed, awesome in the wild and a memorable sight. But I have always regarded the notion that visitors can see just the big five, and then go home feeling they have covered the ground, as distinctly sub-optimal marketing. Any score card that leaves out, for example, the mute grace of the giraffe, or the sheer brute force of the hippopotamus, or - my personal favourite- the nimble elegance of the warthog, does not begin to do justice to the diversity of wildlife in South Africa; and if we also add a few of the rarer sights, like perhaps wild dogs and cheetah, we would encourage visitors to stay longer and add yet more to our tourist earnings. 2. The big five are not, however, only to be found in the bush. In the economic field, too, we have for the past decade been determinedly and assiduously tracking a different sort of big five, representing the key elements we need to nurture to enable our economy to achieve higher and rising levels of sustainable growth in output and in employment and hence in living standards for all the people of South Africa. I want tonight briefly to point out these economic big five to you and to suggest that, after years of carefully stalking the spoor, we are now on track and in sight of the big five and well placed to enjoy the continuing benefit of their company. 3.  What are these big five, in the economic field? 4.  First, the economy as a whole continues to demonstrate vigorous and sustained growth. We have in fact achieved continuous positive growth in output for the past 26 consecutive quarters - some six and half years. That is a remarkable track record of cumulative growth. More recently, we have seen growth accelerate, from 3 percent or just over in the past few years to 3.7 percent last year and continuing to run close to that level on the first quarter GDP data released just this week. The economy appears to have moved up in the past two years onto a higher growth trajectory which, if it can be sustained, is extremely good news. 5.  Secondly, there are good reasons for believing that this move to a higher growth trajectory is not a passing phase, but is sustainable and can continue. The reasons are that disciplined fiscal policy has kept the public finances strong, with the budget deficit and public debt kept to prudently manageable levels; and that monetary policy - the particularly responsibility of the Reserve Bank - has succeeded in bringing down inflation and holding it down, so that inflation has been within our target range of 3 - 6 percent continuously since the latter part of 2003. Importantly, this track record of low inflation has helped to bring down inflation expectations, and our projection looking forward is that inflation will remain within our target range. It is this encouraging outlook for inflation that enabled us to reduce interest rates in April, and it is this platform of stability achieved by fiscal and monetary policy working together that gives encouragement that the higher growth trajectory we are experiencing will indeed be sustainable, even though there will inevitably be ups and downs along the way as we experience, for example, vagaries in the global economy and normal business cycle effects. 6.  Thirdly, our external position has been strengthened. Helped by the recovery in the rand from a sharp temporary fall in 2001, we have been able to make good progress in rebuilding our foreign exchange reserves, working towards more normal levels. Moreover, although the general weakening in the dollar has at times been a source of strain on externally-competing sectors of our economy, we have over the past 18 months seen the rand tend to trade on a more settled basis within a broad trading range, with less volatility. The signs we are seeing of a stable and competitive exchange rate will help to sustain the higher growth trajecto