By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa called on the private sector to take advantage of the country’s public infrastructure development boom by investing in the various projects being rolled out across the country.
Ramaphosa delivered the keynote address at the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa (Sidssa) in Cape Town.
The two-day symposium kicked off on Monday and brings together government leaders, infrastructure funding representatives, construction sector representatives and technical experts to discuss and share strategies and best practices for infrastructure development in the country.
Speaking at a briefing in Cape Town, Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson said the symposium comes at a time when South Africa is making significant progress on infrastructure development.
“We are making great progress across the length and breadth of South Africa. The goal is clear: accelerate delivery, stimulate growth, and turn South Africa into a construction site.”
He said the symposium, organised by Infrastructure South Africa (ISA), will highlight infrastructure’s role in driving economic recovery, attracting investment, and creating jobs.
Ramaphosa emphasised that government did not have the financial resources to answer all of the country’s needs, and that it required international and domestic capital to fund “the beckoning infrastructure boom”.
Reflecting on the R1 trillion earmarked for infrastructure investment by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, the President said government will look to partner with the private sector.
He noted that government had been able to come up “with much clearer, forward-looking funding methods” – especially through an agency such as Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) – to provide the credibility that was necessary for stakeholders to invest, so that South Africa could “mobilise the trillions of rands in long-term savings held by domestic and offshore institutions”.
ISA’s main goal is to select strategic infrastructure projects and to prepare and package these projects so that they are viable and bankable undertakings – attractive investments, in other words.
All ISA-selected projects must be valued at R1-billion and above, and must be able to leverage private-sector involvement, blended finance, or be commercially viable on their own. One of ISA’s products is theConstruction Book.
Released last month, the second edition of the Construction Book lists around 250 construction projects with an estimated value of more than R238-billion.
“[This] is a credible and detailed list of fully-funded infrastructure projects,” said Rampahosa.
“This year it includes social infrastructure projects that are overseen by National Treasury.
“By focusing on projects that are procurement-ready and financially secured, it also reduces uncertainty for contractors, consultants, manufacturers and material suppliers.
“We are showing that we have moved from great ideas on paper, to executable plans – to implementation,” noted Ramaphosa.
“We want to move fast,” he added. “We are implementing the reforms that are needed to make it easier for more construction to take place by reducing regulatory duplication and providing investors with long-term certainty.
“Some of the reforms we are focusing on will make it easier for public-private partnerships (PPPs) under the value of R2-billion to gain approval. “This will significantly reduce the procedural complexity of implementing PPPs.”
Ramaphosa also openly acknowledged the errors of the past in his opening address.
“For many years, major projects were announced without technical readiness, cost realism or stakeholder alignment. “Some of us in government will own up to that.
“We have in the past not matched the great ambition we had with the reality of the availability of technical skills that can make the projects bankable.