SPEDU land shortage gets attention
Minister of Investment Trade and Industry, Peggy Serame said preparations to service 1929 hectares of land to address the shortage of land in the Selibe Phikwe Economic Diversification Unit (SPEDU) are ongoing.
She said the project, which is scheduled to commence before the end of this financial year is planned to be completed in 2023. The land consists of 84 hectares industrial, 1300 hectares Urban Agriculture, 480 hectarestourism and 65 hectares civic and community.
SPEDU is currently facilitating 45 companies, which are at advanced stage of development. Currently 29 companies are operational, out of which 19 have been issued with tax incentives and 21 with 30 percent off-take certificates.
Serame told parliament recently that SPEDU has created 2047 jobs to date against a three-year target of 6856. “This underperformance resulted from the lengthy process of finalizing incentives for the SPEDU area and unavailability of serviced land and factory shells.”
Among the roads constructed since 2017 is the Plaatjan Bridge at the cost of P110 Million, which opened for traffic in December, a 30kilometer stretch of road linking the bridge to serviced roads between Bobirwa and SelebiPhikwe and the rest of the Region is not tarred. Serame also revealed that in addition, Letsibogo and Thune dams Master Plans have been developed and are waiting land servicing. “SPEDU is collaborating with other stakeholders to attract potential investors into the area.”
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee recently, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Investment Trade and Industry, Keganele Malikongwa said there is a need for review of SPEDU due to underperformance.
When the economic revitalization strategy of SPEDU region was formulated in 2017 it was calculated that the expected investment would be P2, 2 billion up to March 2020 with the expected employment of 7000.She pointed out that most companies are not performing well because of low procurement in the region. “We need to go back to the drawing board and review our work and see how we can improve our performance because we have not yet achieved even 50 percent of our target,” he said.