Finance minister Enoch Godongwana put his personal stamp on the finance ministry on Thursday, telling the Sunday Times Investment Summit that his overriding aim will be to make the practical reforms in the economic environment that will enable investment, particularly by local firms.
Saying that he had asked permission from the Treasury to be freed for the day to speak his mind and not be tied down by a lengthy speech full of numbers, Godongwana said that he did not believe that there was “an investment strike” by domestic businesses. Rather, the environment was not conducive.
“What is my message? We have got to find a way between ourselves and business, not only to work together on public infrastructure but also to help business with the normal day-to-day business to invest and remove all the obstacles which impact on them. I’m trying to be practical ... the debate about structural reforms must be seen in that context,” he said.
Godongwana, who has been the ANC’s economic policy chief for the past decade, has been in the job for less than two months but has not spoken extensively in public as the medium-term budget policy statement is due at the beginning of November.
While his predecessor, Tito Mboweni, established Operation Vulindlela, a delivery unit used to unblock policy and implementation obstacles, Mboweni was largely absent from the day-to-day business of the Treasury. Godongwana made it clear that this is where his focus will lie.
Using personal anecdotes and examples, he said there were five areas he wanted to highlight. The first was electricity supply.
“Government has spent 13 years trying to fix Eskom. We need a paradigm shift. What has got to be the focus is fixing the electricity supply. Let’s not talk Eskom, let’s talk security of supply. How we fix that must be a matter of detail,” he said.
Among the recent achievements of Operation Vulindlela, with Godongwana’s support from within the ANC at the time, was to lift the threshold for embedded generation, to free up generation by other players.
The second area was the release of broadband spectrum, the process for which is stalled due to litigation by industry
players. “We are going to close this debate and finalise. However much it takes, it must be closed as a matter of urgency.”
The third was the green revolution, in which SA had no choice but to “follow the global trend” to maintain the competitiveness of its economy and exports. “We are one of the biggest emitters and we have to see what we will do about the green economy. It is a mistake to think we will put this all onto Eskom. We have got to talk about the green economy as a nation and across all sectors.”
Fourth, SA needs to sort out its logistics and the fifth point was to change the environment for doing business.
“We have got to make it really easy to do business. To get a zoning licence in East London, it takes two years. To get one in Cape Town, it takes 80 days. I’m feeling guilty because Cape Town is run by my political opponent, but that is the truth.”
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