by Steuart Pennington
14 August 2024 – President Cyril Ramaphosa convened a meeting yesterday with members of cabinet and senior business leaders to continue the new era of collaboration under South Africa’s 7th democratic administration, to report progress, and to strengthen the partnership formed over a year ago to stimulate economic growth and job creation by addressing constraints on growth in energy, transport and logistics, and crime and corruption.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “The Government of National Unity has reaffirmed its commitment to urgently implement the reform agenda started by the 6th administration and to restore confidence and sentiment
Adrian Gore, co-convenor of the business delegation, commented: “We welcome President Ramaphosa’s commitment to this new era of partnership at a critical inflection point for the country. In the first phase of our partnership, over 130 CEOs pledged support and business invested more than R260 million and mobilised over 350 experts across the 3 focal areas. This has contributed to the excellent progress made with the reduction in loadshedding being the most visible and pronounced achievement. Continued momentum could mean we are able to achieve 3-5% GDP growth by 2030. We will be launching Phase 2 of our partnership with this ambition in mind.”
The meeting reviewed progress over the past year, as the partnership sought to align on priorities for the next chapter.
The energy workstream was reported to have had the most impact,
dramatic reduction in load shedding in collaboration with Eskom (over 140 days without load shedding so far this year), and
significant grid capacity recovery (with more than 6 GW of new energy generation added)
investment in additional technical support and capacitation from 57 companies investing over 9,000 hours at 5 power stations
energy availability factor is currently tracking above 60% (vs 54% in 2023).
However, we still face multiple challenges including rapidly rising electricity costs, unsustainable municipal utilities, complex market reform, a constrained grid with delayed expansion, and stalling investment in new generation.
The transport and logistics and crime and corruption workstreams which are now fully established have also evidenced impact, albeit not as quickly or extensively as anticipated.
Business has provided:
significant technical support and resources to Transnet Freight Rail,
including procurement and operations expertise
port maintenance support for Transnet Port Terminals.
agreement that the rapid implementation of structural reforms and strict adherence to the Freight Logistics Roadmap deadlines are crucial to facilitate participation of, and investment by, the private sector to help address our national logistics challenges.
In the crime and corruption workstream,
immediate joint imperative is to support South Africa’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list,
law enforcement agencies’ intent and ability to successfully prosecute complex crime and corruption cases and recover assets.
business providing specialised skills at arm’s length to support this above.
The promulgation of the NPA Amendment Act
Large-scale job creation.
unlocking a few key policy, regulatory and funding bottlenecks
focus on new work opportunities in tourism and global business services,
skilling that creates new jobs (particularly in digital skills),
providing additional public sector first loss funding to crowd in private sector capital increase affordable debt available for SMMEs,
institutionalizing, expanding and strengthening the SAYouth platform to facilitate access to opportunities for young people.
Martin Kingston, Chair of B4SA “We have a blueprint for success in a new era with the GNU. We are keen that the reforms are implemented with urgency. We need to maintain momentum as the table below illustrates. We are very optimistic about the next phase of the partnership.”
President Ramaphosa, “As we move forward with this partnership, we will intensify our work to address these pressing issues and expand our efforts to drive employment creation. We know that the challenges ahead are formidable. But with our continued partnership, we are well equipped to navigate these complexities and contribute to sustainable growth for South Africa”
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14 August 2024 – President Cyril Ramaphosa convened a meeting yesterday with members of cabinet and senior business leaders to continue the new era of collaboration under South Africa’s 7th democratic administration
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