Cape Town – Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says the partnership between government and business is yielding positive results and will lead to economic growth and job creation.
The Deputy President said this when he answered oral questions at the National Assembly on Wednesday.
“Government is working with its social partners on a range of measures to ensure that we have growth in our economy to create jobs and to promote an investor friendly environment.
“Through these measures that we are undertaking, we are confident that we are able to significantly improve the investment climate in our country and to attract greater interest in our economy and we find this to be an ongoing process where many investors are gaining a lot of interest, largely because of the reform process that we are implementing … with regards to implementing the nine point plan as well as ensuring that we create a really good climate for investment in our country.
“We are on our way to revamp business and economic processes in our country and I would like to say to people – watch this space, because we are going to transform this economy,” he said.
He also said that South Africa’s economic fortunes are inextricably linked with those of the global economy.
It is for this reason, the Deputy President said, that government actively promotes itself and participates in platforms such as the G20, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, BRICS and the World Economic Forum and it does so to seek solutions, solutions that are aimed at addressing South Africa’s weak economic growth.
Reducing constraints through the nine-point plan
The Deputy President said government has worked tirelessly to reduce the domestic constraints to foster growth through the implementation of the nine point plan.
He said the plan prioritizes the stabilisation of South Africa’s electricity supply and also deals with the labour relations issues.
“It also deals with matters of the environment and breaking regulatory barriers to investment. The Industrial Policy Action Plan seeks to re-industrialise our country to create decent jobs, localise technology development and boost exports.
“It is also promoting transformation through the Black Industrialist Programme, which is yielding really good results,” he said.
He said ever since the Black Industrialist Programme was launched earlier this year, government has approved financial and non-financial assistance to 22 black industrialists to tune of R1.5 billion.
“…and in no time we are going to see really good dividends out of this in a form of employment and products that will be brought to the market,” he said.
The Deputy President said the nine-point plan also deals with revitalising agriculture and the agro-processing value chain, which he said is a critical intervention to create a large number of jobs, expand South Africa’s production of high value agricultural crops and to assist small holder and black farmers to compete in the sector.
He also said government is working across a number of mineral value chains to develop beneficiation plans which leverage of South Africa’s mineral wealth.
“Through the initiative of the Minister of Finance and the Business Unity South Africa, Mr Jabu Mabuza and the Minister of Finance [Pravin Gordhan] are taking practical steps to increase investment in the group that they are working in, to support small enterprise development, to address youth unemployment and maintain South Africa’s investment grade.
“To streamline the investment process and accelerate investment, government has created an investment one-stop-shop, which we call Invest SA.
“This structure is providing investor facilitation and has removed and is in the progress of removing a lot of bureaucratic log gems that many people in business often complain about. The Inter-Ministerial Committee on investment is also doing quite a lot of work and has identified 40 high priority investment projects which can be operationalized within a relatively short space of time,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
