Peter Bruce is sounding realistic at last, except when the actual detail of getting infrastructure projects is considered (“Medium-term budget could take the shine off GNU”, October 17).
The government and municipal systems are packed to the gills with ANC apparatchiks, either incompetent or corrupt — often both — making procurement tedious and uncertain at best.
The Pravin Gordhan Treasury-inspired procurement and budgeting systems are overly complicated, racist (affirmative action and BEE adding wasted costs) and unnecessarily rigid for infrastructure projects even when implementation is competent and honest.
Finally the ANC-aligned “construction mafia” is always lurking to derail these projects. SA may stagger on, but until obstacles start being removed rather than clambered over, harder times loom.
Paul Kearney
Via BusinessLIVE
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