The extent to which our crumbling national infrastructure is impeding investment decisions by the private sector is brought home starkly by comments made by Chris Schutte, CEO of Astral Foods, in the Business Times this week.
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In it, he outlines in detail the material impact on profits and employment that the abject dysfunctionality of the Lekwe Municipality, in which a large proportion of its operations are based.
Infrastructure
He catalogues issues of both water and electricity supply that have led to profits being halved in its most recent reporting period.
His heartfelt plea to President Cyril Ramaphosa is “give us infrastructure, and we as businesses release cash, will expand, will invest and create jobs”. I have written on numerous occasions that municipalities are where investment actually happen.
Opportunities
High profile, glitzy events like the recent Investment Conference held in Sandton are great opportunities for sound bites and feel-good press coverage.
So the rebuilding of trust and confidence amongst local investors is vital.
The reality is that every rand of the R300-odd billion ‘pledged’, if converted into actual action, has to be spent in a district, metro or local municipality, and there appears to be zero will on the part of national government to seriously address the condition of local government.
Devastating
If there was, the catalogue of horror stories unpacked by the Auditor-General year after year would not occur. Schutte again: “I have absolutely no sense that the government understands the devastating impact of dysfunctional municipalities on business”.
While there is a case to be made for large scale ‘cross country’ type projects, such as high speed intercity trains, the urgency to turn around the degradation of basic municipal service infrastructure so that businesses can regain a semblance of confidence to invest, is in my view, and that of many business people I interact with, a more pressing imperative. The plaintive cry is to get the basics right.
Confidence
And in a telling reference to the amount of time and resources the president and his top team are devoting to attracting international investment, Schutte observes “….government also doesn’t understand that international investors look at what local investors are doing, then follow them”.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, he joined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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