Organised business says its joint effort with the government to solve the country’s national challenges has been “extremely productive” thus far and could well result in an end to power outages and far more productive freight management systems by the end of 2024.
Eskom’s inability to keep the lights on and low productivity on Transnet’s rail networks as well as its ports is a major impediment to the country’s growth prospects.
“I think we’re starting to see traction emerge in a whole host of areas. We had to define the task, populate work streams and put systems in place or else we wouldn’t see any long lasting outcomes,” Martin Kingston, chair of Business for SA (B4SA) and former CEO of Rothschild & Co told Business Day on Wednesday.
“What we are now seeing is an alignment, we are getting into a rhythm. Yes, if everything goes to plan we could see a dramatic difference by the end of next year,” he said.
Ramaphosa held a high level meeting with business leaders on Tuesday.
On the problems at Transnet and Eskom Kingston said: “Of course we are concerned. That there needs to be stability. That is essential. We encourage government to take the necessary steps to ensure the correct management and executive are in place.”
Organised business agreed with the government in early June to work together on energy, logistics and crime, the three priority areas business identified as critical to turning around the economy.
They have established joint working groups which will report back to Ramaphosa every six weeks.
CEOs of big corporates such as Discovery’s Adrian Gore, Anglo American’s Nolitha Fakude, Remgro’s Jannie Durand and Sanlam’s Paul Hanratty were among the CEOs who attended Tuesday’s meeting. Government ministers and directors-general, as well as Eskom and Transnet leaders, are among those populating the work streams.
This collaboration was initiated in June 2023, with the aim of significantly growing SA’s economy, and restoring public and investor confidence through critical interventions to address the key challenges of energy, logistics, and crime and corruption.
“While we have identified key milestones and set out the processes to achieve these, the real test of our success will be in the results felt by ordinary citizens,” Ramaphosa said after the meeting.
Gore added that while it is early in the partnership, the collective work rate has been excellent and “there are clear areas of progress”, which he believes they can build on to achieve real change.
“Putting in place a viable, critical path per focal area, with clear short-term deliverables against which we collectively measure our progress, is crucial for building confidence in our ability to deliver,” Gore said.
The government and business outlined their immediate plans in a joint statement after the meeting. “Full implementation of the plan across three core priorities — improving the performance of Eskom’s existing power stations; adding new generation capacity, and reforming the energy sector — will result in over 12GW of generation capacity being recovered or added to the system from Eskom and the private sector by the end of 2024,” the statement read.
It also said corridor recovery teams have been established for five strategic corridors, comprising Transnet managing executives, industry representatives and independent experts, and a delivery plan has been developed with specific actions and time frames to achieve the targeted increase in freight volumes.
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