Reacting to the State of the Nation Address, Port Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PERCCI) chief executive officer Kevin Hustler said:
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address definitely provided positive indications of a will to encourage investment and so create jobs. The question now is whether the President and his colleagues in government and the public service can deliver on his promises and that he will follow through on his pledge to turn all the good intentions into reality. Ensuring this happens is vital for continued and future investment in the country and its natural result of meeting the President’s stated aim of creating millions of jobs.
The big business highlights are obviously the jobs fund of R9-billion over the next three years the R20-billion and the R10-billion in funding for the Industrial Development Corporation, also to back investment.
For an organisation like the Port Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PERCCI), which represents close to 800 companies which employ 60 000 people at present, the promise that red tape will be cut in the smaller businesses sector is an overdue and welcome development. That is because even in an already industrialised area like Nelson Mandela Bay, 75% of our members are small and medium enterprises, clearly illustrating the importance of this growing sector of the economy.
The announcement of assistance in the agricultural field is also of particular significance for the Eastern Cape and has already been identified by PERCCI as a priority.
There were, however, some disappointments in the President’s address.
While it was announced that the government would spend R2.6-billion on the country’s ailing water infrastructure, there was no indication of how this would be spent and whether the Mandela Bay’s disastrous drought situation was being considered.
PERCCI would hope that when plans are announced in departmental budgets in the weeks ahead that urgent funding will be provided for this in addition to only R450-million of the R1.6-billion needed to remedy this. In particular, the region needs total funding of R650-million for Nooitgedacht scheme, near Addo, to provide water from the Gariep Dam.
Also, the President tried extremely hard to put a positive spin on improvements in education and promised efforts for further efforts to upgrade, which is all very well.
But the credibility of such announcements is coming more and more into questions in areas like the Eastern Cape. There are protests virtually every day in our area calling for more teachers and better-equipped schools and they are fully justified when it is realised that 6 000 part-time teachers have been laid off while there is a chronic shortage of teaching staff. At the same time, there are still 400 mud schools in the Eastern Cape, most of which lack even the most basic requirements, like being rain-proof, having desks and chairs and teachers who are dependable and arrive every day.
Remedying that situation requires immediate action – not promises. PERCCI urges the President to follow this up personally and ensure it happens in the next few months.
We wait with great anticipation for the departmental budgets and the national Budget to provide further detail on the bold plans – and how they are going to be implemented, followed up and completed.
Alan Straton
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