2022:
THE YEAR FOR DELIVERY Given the state of our economy, gross domestic growth of six per cent seems a far way off, but that target is no utopian dream, writes Busisiwe Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership South Africa
D
ramatic change of attitude from government – where it addresses all our critical issues as emergencies rather than with the tortuously slow pace that seems to be its default mode – would accelerate the time to reach a fast-growing economy. We should demand from government that it ensures 2022 is the year of delivery. The important reforms that have been agreed upon by Cabinet are all being implemented far too slowly, such as the roll out of the infrastructure drive. These are critical to kick-starting our economic recovery and blockages need to be removed to accelerate implementation.
Then, as recently as February this year, there was a breakthrough with the gazetting of the new critical skills list for skilled immigration. It’s important that the list matches the areas where we lack expertise. There’s still much to do in this area though, in particular, streamlining the visa application process, which takes two years, as well as making the critical skills list a more dynamic process that adapts faster to the changing needs of businesses.
SOME GREAT STRIDES HAVE BEEN MADE
What does make me optimistic is that we have made some fantastic strides so far. That’s sometimes easy to forget as frustrations escalate at the government’s overly lethargic approach. But we have come a long way, particularly in the energy sector and with the restructuring of our ports to create an independent national ports authority and allow private sector operations within docks. Successful and efficient implementation of the reforms just in those two sectors would certainly make a huge contribution to accelerating gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the short term, though it won’t get us to six per cent.
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Busisiwe Mavuso
The important reforms that have been agreed upon by Cabinet are all being implemented far too slowly, such as the roll out of the infrastructure drive. Of course, the most dramatic changes have come in the energy sector. Raising the limit for private companies to generate their own electricity to 100MW was a truly momentous event in liberalising the sector and generated much optimism that the government was serious about getting the economy on a strong growth path. There has been other progress in energy: Eskom’s restructuring, where it is being split into three entities – generation, transmission and distribution – and the fifth round of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers’ Programme (REIPPP) has been held and energy from the new plants will start feeding into the national grid in two to three years’ time.
GREATER URGENCY REQUIRED IN TRANSFORMING THE ENERGY SECTOR
Rather ironically though, energy is also the sector where the most frustrating delays are occurring. Given the importance of securing a stable electricity supply that meets demand so that we can finally end
AFRICAN LEADER ISSUE 56 | MARCH 2022
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