01 April 2026
Government aims to move with speed on private investments for development
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Government aims to move with speed on private investments for development
During the sixth South Africa Investment Conference on March 31, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson spoke about how the government was supporting greater investment by private-sector players in the economy.
Godongwana emphasised that a reliance on monopolies in an economy meant that, if there was a problem with a monopoly, the entire sector it served was challenged.
An example of this was the challenges experienced with State-owned power utility Eskom, which led to years of loadshedding.
"Critical to fixing this shortage of power to the grid was to get as many generators as possible online, which also means that there is a more competitive generation market in place.
"A similar arrangement was in place for logistics under State-owned Transnet and a similar problem caught up with us, and led to the entire sector, including mining, facing challenges. This inability of companies to export efficiently also impacted on the State's revenue," Godongwana said.
South Africa aimed to create competitive rail transport and energy generation systems and wanted to move with speed, he said.
"It is in our interests to implement these [structural economic] reforms because research indicates that, if we are able to move with speed, we can boost our economic growth from 1.6% or 1.8% to about 3.5% a year."
South Africa also aimed to reform the capacity of the State, particularly at municipal level. This was because, if municipal regulatory frameworks and business environments made it difficult for businesses to operate, then this environment had to be changed to make it easy to do business.
South Africa was looking at creating a regulatory framework to facilitate this, Godongwana said.
Macpherson similarly said the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure's (DPWI's) role was to prepare infrastructure projects for investment, and pointed out that about 80% of infrastructure projects failed to attract investment because they had not been properly prepared.
The Presidency-led infrastructure project support agency Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) is undertaking a trial project with four local municipalities in South Africa.
There were crises of infrastructure maintenance and development in many local governments, with about R100-billion of infrastructure grants returned to the National Treasury each year, representing missed opportunities, Macpherson said.
Under this pilot initiative, ISA and the DPWI partner with and support local governments by providing them with technical capacity to undertake infrastructure projects.
The pilot project identified about R8-billion worth of projects across the four municipalities for electricity reticulation, roads and water projects that could significantly improve their ability to deliver services, he said.
"[Entertainment and leisure company] Sun International had approached the DPWI about losing clients that could not fly in owing to the poor state of the Pilanesberg Airport [in the North West province].
"The provincial government had tried to implement a project to renew the airport three times without success. We therefore asked ISA to provide support and relaunch this project. We are working to see a public-private partnership take place to redevelop the airport," said Macpherson.
In a subsequent panel discussion, Eskom Group CE Dan Marokane said that, for South Africa to benefit from its renewable-energy resources that were distant from load centres and to realise the investment opportunities, it must build about 14 400 km of transmission and distribution infrastructure within nine years at a cost of about R440-billion.
To facilitate this, South Africa is piloting independent transmission projects (ITPs); initially for 1 200 km of transmission lines in the first phase.
This initiative was supported by the Treasury-led credit guarantee vehicle (CGV), which was backed ...
During the sixth South Africa Investment Conference on March 31, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson spoke about how the government was supporting greater investment by private-sector players in the economy.
Godongwana emphasised that a reliance on monopolies in an economy meant that, if there was a problem with a monopoly, the entire sector it served was challenged.
An example of this was the challenges experienced with State-owned power utility Eskom, which led to years of loadshedding.
"Critical to fixing this shortage of power to the grid was to get as many generators as possible online, which also means that there is a more competitive generation market in place.
"A similar arrangement was in place for logistics under State-owned Transnet and a similar problem caught up with us, and led to the entire sector, including mining, facing challenges. This inability of companies to export efficiently also impacted on the State's revenue," Godongwana said.
South Africa aimed to create competitive rail transport and energy generation systems and wanted to move with speed, he said.
"It is in our interests to implement these [structural economic] reforms because research indicates that, if we are able to move with speed, we can boost our economic growth from 1.6% or 1.8% to about 3.5% a year."
South Africa also aimed to reform the capacity of the State, particularly at municipal level. This was because, if municipal regulatory frameworks and business environments made it difficult for businesses to operate, then this environment had to be changed to make it easy to do business.
South Africa was looking at creating a regulatory framework to facilitate this, Godongwana said.
Macpherson similarly said the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure's (DPWI's) role was to prepare infrastructure projects for investment, and pointed out that about 80% of infrastructure projects failed to attract investment because they had not been properly prepared.
The Presidency-led infrastructure project support agency Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) is undertaking a trial project with four local municipalities in South Africa.
There were crises of infrastructure maintenance and development in many local governments, with about R100-billion of infrastructure grants returned to the National Treasury each year, representing missed opportunities, Macpherson said.
Under this pilot initiative, ISA and the DPWI partner with and support local governments by providing them with technical capacity to undertake infrastructure projects.
The pilot project identified about R8-billion worth of projects across the four municipalities for electricity reticulation, roads and water projects that could significantly improve their ability to deliver services, he said.
"[Entertainment and leisure company] Sun International had approached the DPWI about losing clients that could not fly in owing to the poor state of the Pilanesberg Airport [in the North West province].
"The provincial government had tried to implement a project to renew the airport three times without success. We therefore asked ISA to provide support and relaunch this project. We are working to see a public-private partnership take place to redevelop the airport," said Macpherson.
In a subsequent panel discussion, Eskom Group CE Dan Marokane said that, for South Africa to benefit from its renewable-energy resources that were distant from load centres and to realise the investment opportunities, it must build about 14 400 km of transmission and distribution infrastructure within nine years at a cost of about R440-billion.
To facilitate this, South Africa is piloting independent transmission projects (ITPs); initially for 1 200 km of transmission lines in the first phase.
This initiative was supported by the Treasury-led credit guarantee vehicle (CGV), which was backed ...