PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
2021 MBA PRESIDENT’S ANNUAL REPORT In my acceptance speech of the MBSA presidency last year, I emphasised the need for clarity of purpose if the industry is to prosper beyond the prevailing socioeconomic challenges. There was one key thing I said: we needed to save the industry. That was work! Since then, the country’s planned economic recovery model has been encouraging. It started with a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination roll-out in February, followed by presentations of the State of the Nation and Budget Speech by the country’s president and finance minister respectively. Both were clear on the path to be followed as we extricate ourselves from the burden of the ongoing health and economic crisis. Since then, we have been in constant engagement with government to ensure that the plans presented in the State of the Nation Address and the Budget Speech are put into action. While we do so, the sector has unfortunately remained under pressure, with many construction companies, particularly small businesses, closing due to lack of work. Despite these challenges, we have continued to forge ahead to make 2021 a year of rebuilding and recovery. I also pledged that we would not sit and wait, but would be proactive in reaching out and finding ways to assist government in rolling out the country’s infrastructure plan. It is something we owe to ourselves as a sector and to the country at large. I planned on building a stronger relationship with government based on trust and tasked the executive
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director with prioritising this. I am happy to present my report for the year, which highlights significant progress made in the past 12 months on these and other industry matters. CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN 2021 We recognise and have acknowledged that the construction industry in SA was in a general state of decline prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and that the year 2020 merely brought to the fore the underlying need for an alternative model of doing work. Problems such as lack of work, low productivity, lack of innovation, the slow pace of transformation, industry disunity and corruption, among others, had ravaged the sector for many years prior to the advent of the coronavirus. As a result, our efforts to find solutions were aimed at addressing many of these long-standing industry challenges. CONSTRUCTION ALLIANCE SOUTH AFRICA Part of what we achieved in forging ahead with the industry recovery plan was to unify and amplify the industry’s voice in its call for more work for the sector. The mushrooming of industry bodies representing contractors or subcontractors had not been to the industry’s advantage and it was becoming clearer that a more cohesive and collaborative approach among the various industry bodies was needed for sustainability of the sector. To this end, Master Builders SA was instrumental in establishing Construction Alliance SA (CASA) as the
SOUTH AFRICAN BUILDER OCTOBER 2021
