Cape Town - Labour federation Cosatu and the Democratic Alliance welcomed President Jacob Zuma's proposal in the State of the Nation address tonight to merge the government's small business finance institutions into a single funding body.
Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi praised the proposed mergre of Khula and the South African Micro-Apex Fund (Samaf), as well as the Industrial Development Corporation's (IDC) small business funding initiatives into a single small business funding body and also commended the tax breaks aimed at manufacturing businesses.
However, Vavi questioned the state's ability deliver on its promise to create jobs, if it did not boost efficiency and its present capacity.
The DA's Tim Harris, the party's shadow minister on trade and industry, said he hoped that the government would take a leaf from BNDES, the Brazilian state's successful development finance institution, in creating a single small business funding agency.
Harris also applauded Zuma's announcement of a R9-billion jobs fund and believed it effectively amounted to a "repackaging and rebranding" of the DA's youth wage subsidy "to make it more palatable for the unions."
But he stressed that Zuma revealed very few new ideas, adding that he thought most were rehashed ideas.
Harris's central concern was that the private sector was not central enough to the government's drive to create more jobs.
"We need to be working out ways to incentivise the private sector to create jobs, rather than forcing government departments to meet certain jobs targets and he seems to be lending his support to the labour law proposal, which is just going to destroy jobs - according to the research which government itself commissioned," Harris said.
Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel said the government's New Growth Path had created an attractive environment for investment.
"It's taking the narrative from "jobs are central", to "here are the instruments to get jobs kick-started." But it goes far beyond what the public sector can do. There is also a call for partnership that is put at the centre of much of the message that is put out," Patel told BuaNews.
He said the details of the jobs fund would be revealed during the Budget Speech, with further details to follow thereafter.
