‘The time is now’ to develop cities’ economies – Nene

National Treasury is embarking on an aggressive campaign to turn South Africa’s economy around to ensure growth and making space for an inclusive economy.

The time is now, said Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene at the beginning of Treasury’s weeklong executive leadership programme (ELP) themed “Leading Future Cities – Navigating today’s complexity”, at the Gordon Institute for Business Studies of the University of Pretoria.

Buffalo City, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane, Polokwane and Umhlathuze sent representatives from both political and administrative spheres to figure out how best to kickstart their local economies.

Nene said cities were key to building a prosperous and inclusive South Africa.

“Simple demographic measures in our Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) tell us that SA is close to 70% urbanised and still growing.

“An assessment of economic contribution shows us that over 80% of our national GVA comes from our cities and large towns,” Nene said.

GVA or gross value added is the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an area, industry or sector of an economy.

“When we talk about pushing our economy up that hill, we need the cities to be in gear and with a foot on the accelerator, otherwise we are not going anywhere.”

Nene said some cities were “teetering at the brink of collapse” in spite of their potential.

There are a legion of problems, however, with service delivery protests, government itself not paying municipalities, corruption and infrastructure being the umbrella issues.

As of March 31, economist Karen Heese of Municipal IQ noted Gauteng was still leading major service delivery protests at 21%, followed by the Eastern Cape with 19% and KwaZulu-Natal with 14%.

“The first quarter of 2018 recorded a busy, if not unprecedented, service delivery protest tally, spurred on by an eventful March,” Heese said. “Perhaps most significant, although not a direct service delivery protest, was a wave of land invasions in metros, which will likely become a major policing priority and increase the jostle and demands of protesters to be heard over each other.”

At a National Council of Provinces’ 2018 division of revenue bill committee meeting, the parliamentary monitoring group claimed unfunded municipal budgets remained a major stumbling block in the way of efficient financial management.

Another critical issue was the debt owed by government departments to some municipalities. Only R1.6 billion of the almost R4 billion government owed to municipalities had been paid.

Nene said he would be meeting regularly with the various cities’ mayors.

“It had never been more important we have a cadre of informed, competent and accountable city leaders,” he said.

– amandaw@citizen.co.za

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