Tag: Public Private Partnership (PPP)

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken our society to its core. Many family members, colleagues, friends or acquaintances have either lost their lives or been infected. As devastating as the virus has been to livelihoods and communities, there have also been several silver linings.

The construction industry can play a critical role in helping address the recent hard knocks to the South African economy, but it needs the willingness and, more importantly, the action of all stakeholders to succeed. This was the overwhelming sentiment at a recent conference hosted by Construction Alliance South Africa (CASA) and headline we sponsored.

It’s no secret that South Africa’s education system suffers from inequality and inefficiency. However, in such a young democracy, a certain degree of stumbling is to be expected. Unfortunately, even as we address past-era issues, the gap between privileged private-school education and that provided in peri-urban and rural areas is becoming undeniable and ever-widening, in no small part as a result of the complex COVID-19 environment.

You don’t need to be a Nobel economics laureate to know that with the world’s highest rate of unemployment, South Africa needs to attract a lot more job-creating investments. One of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s (DTIC’s) flagship programmes is the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), a new iteration of what we used to call Industrial Development Zones (IDZs).

Encouraging public sector organisations to become more innovative has always been important. However, doing so has likely never mattered more as the world wrestles with the challenges of the COVID-19 outbreak and recovery.

Every Budget is preceded and followed by the mantra that the Finance Minister faced serious challenges. No, that is never true. All Budgets are easy and straight forward. If they promote prosperity, then countries, including governments and the poor, get rich. All that’s needed is for Budgets to raise rather than lower economic freedom scores – more freedom, more prosperity; less freedom, more poverty. It is that simple.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivered a macabre Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBSP) to Parliament on October 30. The MTBPS communicates to government and the people the economic context of the country and fiscal spending priorities over the coming three years. (It does not include detailed spending plans or tax proposals, which are left to the main budget in February.)

Hold the white dress, cheesy music, expensive, but rather tasteless entrées nobody cares to eat and the dull fruit cake heavy with icing and you reveal the truth: marriage is not just a glamorous ceremony to entertain bored throngs but rather the union of two people.

Despite education taking up the lion’s share of national budgetary spending in South Africa, it is disheartening to still see stories about broken pit toilets, leaking roofs and unqualified teachers. Some stories lament how schools which were built in 1994 still have three pit toilets and only one tap, with parents and teachers making improvements using their own funds.

The stakes have never been higher, and despite Minister Tito Mboweni’s always-jovial presence in parliament as he tabled Budget 2019, his words prepared us for the bitter medicine that must be swallowed before we can experience economic recovery.