The MEC for Economic Development, Firoz Cachalia launches the Gauteng employment growth and economic strategy (GEGDS). This is the strategy that will guide and control the work of the provincial government until 2014 as it cut across to all departments. It outlines a set of strategic choices and programmes that will build towards a strong and sustainable Gauteng economy in which all can access economy opportunities and enjoy decent work.
Cachalia said: "The launch of this strategy is not just about launching a document, it is linked to specific projects which are happening on the ground including the Community Works programme which we are implementing in three municipal areas including Thembisa, supporting the development of the agro-business through the maize triangle, ensuring strengthened support to cooperatives, sectors development and pursuing the green economy agenda. We have however decided to launch the strategy broadly, for public consultation and debate. The GEGDS is the key document informing the growth path for Gauteng for 2009 to 2014, making it not just a strategy for the Department of Economic Development but a strategy for the entire province of Gauteng."
GEGDS is a multi-stakeholder strategy with a vision of creating an inclusive and sustainable Gauteng City-Region that promotes a developmental state and an equitable society.
To achieve this, there is only one complex long-term strategic objective for the province, which is to create decent work through endogenous growth by building a growing, inclusive economy.
This strategic objective is derived from the 2009 to 2014 Gauteng medium term strategic framework (MTSF), which is aligned to the Gauteng vision for 2055. Thus, it is important to note that the GEGDS is one of the overarching strategies for the province that talks to the first strategic objective in the MTSF, which is to "create decent work and build a growing, inclusive economy".
Similarly, there are six other strategic priorities that together make up the MTSF for the province.
The GEGDS also links several of the other strategic priorities as they are necessary and relate directly to the creation of decent work and building a growing, inclusive economy. To measure the successful implementation of the GEGDS, three high level targets have been adopted, namely:
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increase the economic growth rate
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reduce the unemployment rate and
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reduce the poverty level for those that live under the minimum living level.
Cachalia said: "There are five strategic pillars, designed to ensure convergence between the economic and social strategies of government and promote a developmental state through the GEGDS.
"The pillars combine a series of economic, social and environmental factors to ensure cohesion between sustainable economic development and poverty alleviation and social protection, thus ensuring synergy and promoting a developmental state through cooperative governance."
The five pillars are:
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transforming the provincial economy through improved efficiency (economic)
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sustainable employment creation (economic)
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increasing economic equity and ownership (equality)
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investing in people (social) and
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sustainable communities and social cohesion (social).
The GEGDS has a series of interventions aimed at addressing the structural and cyclical factors plaguing Gauteng. There are also a series of medium interventions that will progressively transform the underlying structure of the economy by creating decent work through an endogenously growing, inclusive, innovating and greening economy. These three concepts form the long-term goals of the Gauteng City-Region.
The first goal focuses on an innovating economy, creating a more efficient economy, through the productive use of existing resources.
Innovation includes scientific, social, environmental and economic, the latter being represented through the entrepreneurial spirit that builds the economy from the 'bottom up'. An innovating economy reduces input costs and allows more people avenues to participate in the economy.
The second goal of the GEGDS is a greening economy, promoting long-term sustainability by progressively shifting away from costly, unsustainable dirty energy.
The GEGDS targets energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives as well as innovations to convert waste into energy. The green economy will lead to creation of a new sector; however, attention should be given to displaced sectors to prevent job losses.
The third goal is to create an inclusive economy, broadly defined, which connects people by bring everyone in the province closer together.
An inclusive economy relies primarily on infrastructure investment which is strategic, socio-economic or bulk. Extensive, innovative infrastructure investment brings people closer together by linking them through increased access to services and markets, thus reducing transaction costs.
To achieve an inclusive, green and innovating economy government must use various drivers, to address the current challenges facing the economy and progressively, through phased strategies, transform the structure of the economy thus improving efficiency. These drivers are:
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An employment safety net achieved through direct employment creation initiatives that provide short-term employment and income relief through community and Expanded Public Works Programmes (EPWP).
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A youth employability programme that focuses on the unemployed youth.
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Preventing job-losses in distressed sectors proactively ensures that people are not retrenched but are re-skilled and channeled into evolving sectors.
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Community led local economic development encourages economic participation from the 'bottom up'.
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Active industrial sector development strategy focuses on sectors that have large employment multipliers and or backward linkages, to create employment.
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Cost of doing business improves the ease and reduces the cost of doing business. Special attention is placed on Transport and the information and communications technology (ICT) sectors, because of their impact on the network economy and the cost of economic transactions.
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Strategic, socio-economic and bulk infrastructure aimed at supporting employment creation, sectoral development, localisation and Foreign Direct Investment.
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Energy efficiency and waste management which promotes sustainable energy usage.
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Create green job opportunities.
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Support small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and cooperatives through financial and non-financial support thus increasing access to finance, which increases ownership and equity.
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Strategic procurement to promote localisation, especially through government supply chain processes and the broad-base black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) strategy.
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Skills development.
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Social insurance and social protection are measures aimed at alleviating poverty for the elderly, people with disabilities and primary care givers of children and foster children. It is necessary to wrap social and economic services by government around in distress.
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Access to health care and basic education, including early childhood development.
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Spatial planning that integrates all parts of the province and effectively reduces transaction costs.
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Sustainable mobility is about clean, green transport, freight and logistics, while reducing the carbon foot-print.
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Safe communities.
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Rural and agricultural development aimed at stimulating food security and poverty alleviation.
The GEGDS leads to a new growth path, through a process that engages multi-party stakeholders to ensure even higher growth, and lower rates of unemployment and poverty. Thus the growth path requires cooperative governance and a multi-party social compact. The success of the GEGDS relies on adequate government capacity to deliver, the need for cooperative governance, and a solid social compact between economic actors and one vision.
