Strike over, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa is inching closer to his ambitious goal of raising $100bn in investment over five years, with companies committing to investment plans of R290bn.

Ramaphosa made the announcement at Friday’s investment conference, attended by 1,300 local and foreign business leaders. “There have been accusations that SA is on an investment strike,” said Ramaphosa. “Today maybe I can say the strike is over.”

Ramaphosa’s four presidential investment envoys Phumzile Langeni, Jacko Maree, Mcebisi Jonas and Trevor Manuel have travelled across SA and around the globe to meet potential investors.

“We did so knowing no meaningful growth and job creation would be done without a massive surge in investment in our economy,” said Ramaphosa.

The biggest investments were announced by Anglo American (R71.5bn), Vodacom (R50bn), the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (R40bn), Vedanta (R21.4bn) and Mercedes-Benz SA (R10bn). In addition to the private sector investments announced at the conference, R35.5bn has been pledged from countries including China, the UK, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Ramaphosa also announced an additional R400bn in investment pledges. The summit came two days after finance minister Tito Mboweni presented a grim medium-term budget policy statement, in which he noted that economic growth forecasts for the year had been slashed by more than half, and debt had ballooned. The market reacted negatively to Mboweni’s dour statement, reigniting fears of a ratings downgrade from Moody’s Investors Service, the last of the three credit ratings agencies that has SA rated at investment grade.

With national elections in 2019, Ramaphosa is under pressure to show tangible results from his plans to grow SA’s battered economy. In September he announced a stimulus package aimed at boosting the economy, through a reprioritisation of the budget. October’s presidential jobs summit concluded with a pledge to create 275,000 more jobs a year.