Nicola Mawson
The government and business have agreed, at their first meeting since the elections, to accelerate the implementation of their joint initiative to tackle challenges such as electricity outages, poor logistics, and high crime over the next 12 to 18 months.
Addressing the media yesterday following a meeting between President Cyril Ramaphosa, ministers, and business leaders, Trade, Industry, and Competition Minister Parks Tau said the government had set itself the target of economic growth of between 3% and 5% by 2030 on the back of ample power supply.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to reach 1.6% from the end of this year through to 2026, according to the National Treasury’s February estimates.
Although there is still much work to be done in terms of stabilising the energy supply, James Mackay, CEO of the Energy Council of South Africa, said there was much to celebrate as South Africa closed in on 150 days without rolling blackouts.
“There is growing confidence that we will be able to call an official end to load shedding in the near future,” he said.
Mackay, who was providing an update on the energy stream, also noted that South Africa must be deliberate in its focus on Just Energy Transition, while also tackling inefficiencies that were introducing costs for end users and routing out and dealing with corruption.
“Greater collaboration really is creating renewed confidence in the economy. I think that’s very important.”
Providing an update on the National Logistics Crisis Committee was Rudi Dicks, head of the Project Management Office at the Presidency, who said that private sector collaboration was vital when it came to righting the logistics network, which had not been progressing as rapidly as anticipated.
Transnet needed to increase its freight rail output to 200 million tons a year, without which there would be knock-on effects on the rest of the economy, said Dicks.
“We need to be able to ensure that we do have a more ambitious target to push up the volume.” In 2023, Transnet moved 49.6 million tons, down 17.44% on the previous year.
Currently, Transnet is making progress in implementing its turnaround plan, yet substantial interventions still need to be made to improve performance.
A key aspect that was highlighted was the need to stick to the Freight Logistics Roadmap deadlines to facilitate participation of, and investment by, the private sector to help address national logistics challenges.
“This is crucial to ensure that our commodities and manufactured products can be competitively sold into the local market and exported to meet demand. Resolving these issues will promote job retention and job creation,” a statement released after the media briefing stated.
Advocate Anton du Plessis, deputy national director of public prosecutions, explained that the Joint Initiative on Crime and Corruption was prioritising getting off the Financial Action Task Force’s greylist by implementing sufficient financial controls.
“And we have very little time – we have until January to get through the final two main substantive barriers for that.”
Du Plessis said justice was “ramping up progress in the context of very complex and specific state capture prosecutions”.
He explained that, as part of getting off the greylist, the country had to show “sustained progress in the investigation and prosecution of complex and stand-alone money laundering and terrorist financing cases”.
The private sector was assisting in this regard by providing specialist forensics or financial experts to support investigations into 20 priority cases, Du Plessis said.
In July, the National Treasury said that there were 14 items out of an initial 22 that remained to be addressed as per the Task Force, but it did not expect to be removed from the list before the middle of next year.
BUSINESS REPORT