The private sector is extremely frustrated by the government’s failure to work with it to solve challenges, says Business Unity SA (Busa) CEO Cas Coovadia.
Speaking at a postbudget panel discussion hosted by PwC, Coovadia said President Cyril Ramaphosa is wrong in saying that the private sector must come to the party and stop shouting from the sidelines. Rather it is the case that government has failed to interact with the private sector.
"Believe you me if the private sector had not come to the party in the last few years we would have been [in a worse position]," Coovadia said.
"The private sector came to the party during Covid-19 and have been at the party since. We have done a phenomenal amount of work on energy, logistics, law and order — all with the view to giving the president two pages on each of these and saying these are the three things you need to do and if you do this, this is how the dial will shift on investment and growth.
"We have battled to pull the government around the table to talk about this despite the commitment by the president in January last year to do that."
Coovadia said business has repeatedly told the government that if it creates the right environment, investment would flow. An example of the government’s deafness to business’ pleadings is on measures to boost renewable energy generation made four years ago.
"There are parts of government that still ideologically don’t trust the private sector. There are parts that want to control as much as they can without having the capacity to do anything good and optimal in controlling stuff. And yet the resources and capacity lie in the private sector.
"I believe that by and large you have a patriotic private sector in this country, and we are not utilising that capacity and resource.
"Unless the government under the leadership of the president unequivocally says that we need to collaborate, and actually demonstrates that, we will not make any real progress."
Coovadia said there had been no real interaction between the government and the private sector. "We are getting to the stage where we are having to ask as the private sector that given that there isn’t a quid pro quo from government in any real positive sense, are we becoming complicit in nothing happening?
"We are not saying that we will pull back totally as that would be disastrous, but I think the time has come for the private sector to unapologetically say that we want to help, we have the resources, we have the capacity, these are the critical issues for us, this is what we are going to do, Mr President let us talk. It is not a negotiation," Coovadia said.
The private sector should ask the government whether it will work with it or not.
"The discussion needs to become far more robust and far more direct and far more transactional," he said.
SA Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner Edward Kieswetter, who has spearheaded the strengthening of the tax authority after its demise under his predecessor Tom Moyane, agreed that there was a "huge willingness" in the private sector to work together. He was one of the guests on the panel.
He would not agree to stay on at Sars for a second term when his contract expires in a year.
Of the 14-million tax returns processed to date, 1.7-million have been selected and stopped in all tax categories through a fraud and risk-detection system, which prevented impermissible or fraudulent refunds of R61bn.
This year to date, 178 cases have been handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for fraudulent underdeclaration of income or overstatement of expenses. Of these, 94 cases have been concluded, with a 98% conviction rate.
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