Green light for infrastructure planning

MORE THAN 20 years after the advent of democracy, the Gauteng government is finally putting in place the theoretical building blocks required to plan and manage large scale infrastructure implementation.

The creation of the Gauteng City-Region Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan and the Gauteng Spatial Development Framework are theoretical tools necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure successful infrastructure pursuit. The public sector, responsible for directing and managing most of the infrastructure implementation in the country, is notoriously bad at implementation, resulting in corruption, inefficiency as well as budget and time overruns.

The delayed start to proper planning for infrastructure implementation has resulted in cursory and badly managed interventions in the years leading up to 2014. As a result, the infrastructure backlog bequeathed to us by apartheid has been exacerbated by the government’s inability to meaningfully embrace the challenges.

It is common cause that infrastructure investment at sufficient levels stimulates the economy, creates jobs, improves service delivery and enhances social transformation. So what has gone wrong in the intervening years?

At a national level, the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Committee conducted an in-depth analysis of all factors impacting on infrastructure development and highlighted a number of challenges that are common across all levels of government. These include infrastructure planning that is of poor quality and not integrated across different government agencies, lack of policy direction, poor execution as well as bureaucratic delays. In addition, the quality of project management is poor, tender manipulation and corruption are rife, contractors are not paid on time and there is a lack of technical capacity.

The Gauteng infrastructure programme has not produced as a result of the failure to effectively plan, implement and manage these critical investments. As a result, the positive economic and social impact of infrastructure development has not been realised and Gauteng is under pressure to retain its reputation as the “gateway to Africa”.

Housing is a critical element in improving the lives of people and this sector impacts heavily on infrastructure demand in the short, medium and long term. The lack of communication and a clear understanding of processes that cut across different spheres of government have resulted in human settlements decisions and infrastructure decisions being made independently of one another. It is necessary that decisions are made with the full knowledge of the requirement for infrastructure, together with the cost implications over the total lifecycle of the developments.

The public sector does not have the financial means to fund all infrastructure requirements. The private sector has a role to play. A downgraded economy and the political attack on private property rights by the government do not assist in unlocking private sector investment.

A funding summit was held recently to expose the private sector to government perspectives on infrastructure. The attendees of the summit had the light shone in their eyes by the bandying about of an estimated budget spend on infrastructure of R1.6 trillion up to 2030. What they were not told however is that the R1.6 trillion is purely “aspirational” and does not represent funded projects waiting to be implemented.

The gap in technical skills in the public sector has had a negative impact on Gauteng’s infrastructure trajectory over the last 20 years. This relates not only to engineers, but also to legal and financial expertise for increasing the state’s capacity for partnerships with the private sector.

It is clear that planning for infrastructure requires a long-term view, cannot be done in the absence of a spatial vision, requires co-ordination across the different implementing agencies and that emerging smart technology and innovative methods must be utilised to build the infrastructure.

While the administration of Premier Makhura must get credit for confronting some of these dynamics, there is still much uncertainty as to whether the policies, plans and frameworks will survive the poor implementation of the public sector.

What is required is transparency in terms of presenting only those projects that are funded and are likely to be implemented and second, to explain the strategy that will be used to assuage the concerns of the private sector to invest in a poisoned political climate.

Planning for infrastructure requires a long-term view