- Yesterday, September 26, 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa met with members of Cabinet and senior business leaders (B4SA) to receive an update on progress made in the collaboration between government and business.
- Speed of turnaround to end load shedding, fix logistics system, and tackle crime and corruption critical to success.
This collaboration was initiated in June 2023 with the aim of growing South Africa’s economy and restoring public and investor confidence through critical interventions to address the key challenges of energy, logistics, and crime and corruption. Highlighting the meaningful progress made since the start of the initiative, President Ramaphosa said: “We have established an effective working relationship between government and business to tackle the most immediate challenges facing our economy.
“While we have identified key milestones and set out the processes to achieve these, the real test of our success will be in the results felt by ordinary citizens. We are confident that by working together and marshalling the significant resources and expertise that exist in our country, we will end load shedding, fix our logistics system, and tackle crime and corruption.”
B4SA steering committee chairperson Martin Kingston said: “We have fully capacitated the areas and workstreams that are lying thereunder. It’s critical to be able to harness the resources, skills and expertise of all stakeholders. Businesses have a very significant contribution to make [and that’s]evident in the CEO pledge now signed by 130 CEOs from leading companies from across the depth and breadth of the economy, bringing the resources to bear to actually… collaborate with government.
He said businesses had helped with technical expertise at Eskom and provided input on how to help improve the diesel burn rate from 17% to 26% at the Cape Town-based Ankerlig power station. “We need to move with speed and I think this is what the president reflected. He wants us to see us move much faster and with greater speed to try and resolve some of these issues going forward,” Dicks said.
Dicks added that they would meet with directors-general and ministers every six weeks. He described the last meeting as “extremely productive” in tackling the many crises related to energy, logistics, crime and corruption.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
