President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday moved to provide strong government leadership in the recessionary environment to stimulate the economy and create jobs.
The president announced a package of measures to act as a catalyst and draw resources from the public and private sector to revitalise the lagging economy.
Ramaphosa announced a wide range of interventions focusing on agriculture‚ tourism‚ manufacturing‚ communications and township economies – with immediate implementation and oversight from a new execution team in the presidency.
The plan will result in reprioritised expenditure and new project level funding of around R50bn‚ Ramaphosa said.
Minister of finance Nhlanhla Nene will outline the final amounts involved and the specific areas to be reprioritised during the medium term budget policy statement next month. Ramaphosa said his plan prioritised infrastructure spending as a “critical driver of economic activity”.
“With a view to unlocking the potential to create more jobs on a large scale‚ we have decided to set up a South Africa Infrastructure Fund‚ which will fundamentally transform our approach to the rollout‚ building and implementation of infrastructure projects.
“The lessons we learnt in the 2010 World Cup infrastructure rollout will stand us in good stead as we set out this fund‚” Ramaphosa said.
He said the private sector was hugely excited to partner with government on a mega fund. Government’s contribution to the infrastructure fund over three years would be in excess of R400bn. This would be used to leverage additional resources from developmental finance institutions‚ multilateral development banks‚ and private lenders and investors.
“In support of the stimulus efforts‚ the Industrial Development Corporation will be targeting to increase its approvals to R20bn over 12 months‚ an increase of 20% on the previous year‚” he said.
Ramaphosa announced that he was establishing a dedicated infrastructure execution team in the Presidency to oversee implementation.
“The team will identify and quantify ‘shovel-ready’ public sector projects‚ such as roads and dams‚ and engage the private sector to manage delivery‚” he said.
Ramaphosa said the stimulus and recovery plan consisted of a range of measures to ignite economic activity‚ restore investor confidence‚ prevent further job losses and create new jobs‚ and to address some urgent challenges that affect the conditions faced by vulnerable groups among our people...