If local and foreign companies are falling over themselves to pour money into SA, as President Cyril Ramaphosa told everyone at his investment conference last week, then why is growth stuttering along at less than 2%? And why has the unemployment rate set increasingly grim new records since he launched his annual shindig four years ago, even as Covid has waned?
And if SA’s investment climate is as ripe for the picking as Ramaphosa’s coterie of advisers suggest, why are two local businesses of long standing closing or relocating precisely because of a business environment they feel is wholly unsupportive? These realities suggest that the investment pledges Ramaphosa speaks of are largely political hot air — money that would have been spent on sustaining operations anyway, particularly in the case of the mining sector, where companies such as Impala, Anglo and Exxaro have long-term budgets for mines with a life of 20-plus years.
, not to mention new investment. Yet, six years after Ramaphosa promised that load-shedding would be gone, SA is still gasping for power as Eskom lurches from outage to outage.
The government does not seem great at making connections like that... Big parties yes, delivery, no.....