As the members of the first National Planning Commission (NPC) hand over their final “close-out report” on Thursday, a call is being made for the nominations of new members to continue the work that has been done since the commission was established in 2010.

The NPC, which finalised South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP), on Thursday briefed President Jacob Zuma on the work it had completed over the past five years and outlined what the incoming committee needed to achieve over the next five years.

The NPC was led by the commission’s first chairperson and former Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel, former deputy chairperson and South Africa’s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, and current outgoing chairperson and Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Minister Jeff Radebe.

The outgoing commissioners were finalising a discussion document on planning, which combined the experiences of the NPC over its five-year term and international experiences and would deliver recommendations on “how government planning should be done”.

While the NDP outlined South Africa’s strategic direction, the discussion document, which would be published in May, would deal with the “nuts and bolts” of planning.