At a breakfast ahead of the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, next week, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said he would use the platform to encourage investment in South Africa.
According to Mboweni, Davos is “not a place for long political speeches”, and is more about interaction and potentially making deals.
Mboweni plans to “tell the world” there is a “serious determination” by the executive to restructure and reform the South African economy.
While the minister said he wouldn’t “spin” our energy crisis away or deny that we have load shedding, he wouldn’t be a “doomsayer” either.
“It’s not true to say we have no electricity in South Africa,” he said, adding that government had “already taken steps” to remedy problems with Eskom’s management.
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Mboweni also discussed self-generation of power, after President Cyril Ramaphosa said at the Business Economic Indaba in Sandton on Tuesday that government would deregulate the process of households and businesses generating their own power.
He clarified that this applies only to generation, not transmission. While the government is “opening up space for others” to generate electricity, the transmission will remain under the control of one company. There will, however, be multiple distributors, with Mboweni saying that the amount “may increase”.
Mboweni said he’d been going to Davos since 1991, and had learned that the Forum was not the right place for political speeches.
He said former minister Jay Naidoo “thought it was a rally” and made the mistake of making a political speech, while a long speech written for former president Nelson Mandela about nationalisation was reduced to three pages.
The World Economic Forum takes place in Davos from 21 to 24 January.
(Compiled by Daniel Friedman)
