Policy certainty key to bringing billions in investment into SA
THE government believes it will attract the billions of rand it needs in direct foreign investment and local investment when it meets top executives from all over the world next week.
Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic adviser Trudi Makhaya said yesterday they had now removed some of the key impediments to attracting investments and igniting growth in the economy.
One of the problems that had been eliminated was policy certainty.
Patel said some of the top chief executives were leading JSE-listed companies and billion-dollar companies from 25 countries in the world.
Makhaya said the investment summit “is linked to the jobs summit and is an avenue to mobilise resources to fuel our socio-economic development”.
Ramaphosa has been on an investment drive and wants to attract $100 billion (R1.4 trillion) to the country in the next five years.
Patel said the conference would not be a talk shop, but would consist of working sessions, where they would follow up with implementation projects in the future. “What is the problem we are trying to address? The first issue that has led to the limited level of investment has been business confidence.”
He said the conference was an opportunity to tell the story of the country. “We want foreign investors to put significant sums of money into mining, for example. Investors want to see that the government has longerterm vision,” said Patel.
He added that policy certainty would calm the nerves of foreign investors and they would start injecting cash into the economy. He said business confidence went together with policy certainty. He noted that Ramaphosa had met some of the investors in the past and there had been a positive response from them.
Patel said Ramaphosa would report back regularly on the implementation plans of the investment summit.
Both Patel and Makhaya would not say what they expected to be proposed in the summit next week.
Patel said details of the investment inflows would be released next Friday when the summit began.
He said the summit would also see Cabinet ministers meeting investors in an effort to ensure there were concrete plans.
Ramaphosa has been punting the summit for several months, and he appointed Makhaya as one of his special envoys on investments.
Cosatu has, in the past, complained that local investors were on an “investment strike” and refusing to pump billions of rand into the economy.
But during the jobs summit, business denied this, saying it had been committed to invest in South Africa.