The Lord Mayor of the City of London
Minister Rob Davies and Lord Jones, Business Ambassador for United Kingdom Trade and Investment
Honourable ministers
Leaders of business organisations present
Esteemed members of the business community
Ladies and gentlemen
It is a great pleasure to meet with you as we conclude our successful State Visit to the United Kingdom. Let me take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to her majesty, the government of the United Kingdom and the City of London for hosting us this week. The visit has certainly taken our relations to another level, given the highly successful nature of all the engagements we have had individually and collectively.
As we conclude the visit, our enthusiasm about working harder to strengthen these relations has been given added impetus indeed. South Africa attaches a great importance to the friendship and cooperation which has developed between our people, positively affecting our relations at bilateral and multilateral levels.
Over the last few years, the political relations between our countries have scaled up to new heights in terms of their quality and maturity. Similarly, our economic relations have also continued to deepen. Almost daily, the United Kingdom consolidates its position as one of our leading economic partners, as the figures indicate.
The level of investment on each other’s economy is encouraging. South Africa now not only exports fine wine to the United Kingdom but is also investing in various other sectors, as 600 South African companies already have a presence in this country.
We have been accompanied by more than 200 business persons on this state visit, representing various sectors. This augurs well for the future of our trade and economic relations. We have to ensure that the interactions that took place during the week produce results as we are serious about creating decent jobs back home.
Esteemed guests,
In our 2008 contact through the South African Bilateral Forum, a trade and investment review was established. Its main purpose was to broaden and deepen sustainable partnerships and cooperation in trade and economy.
Information regarding policy priorities was exchanged, with a view to determine crucial areas.
South Africa indicated focus areas for investment, which should be pursued in order for the current relations and achievements not to stagnate. These include gas and liquid technology, nuclear energy and infrastructure, particularly building new power stations and refurbishing old ones to increase energy creation capacity.
We came to the United Kingdom feeling somewhat upbeat as the economic recession which has seriously affected our economy is gradually subsiding, as the entire global economy shows. According to the latest figures for December, manufacturing output was 3.2 percent higher than in the corresponding month 2008, first annualised for 14 months. The prospects are good and we should now make hay as the sun is beginning to shine again. For a country that lost close to a million jobs due to the recession, we have every reason to be encouraged by the changing economic prospects.
On our South African side, we will continue to improve our investment climate and cost of doing business in South Africa. The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies announced a second industrial policy action plan last week. This is our plan representing a significant step forward in improving our efforts to promote long term industrialisation and industrial diversification beyond our current reliance on traditional commodities and non-tradable services. I am sure you have deliberated on these opportunities in your break away sessions.
We are investing in the health and skills of our population as part of our core development goals, and also to improve our global competitiveness. Health and education are part of the five priorities we have committed ourselves to, as the current administration in our country. The others are creating decent work, fighting crime as well as rural development and land reform.
Public hospitals in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Gauteng provinces are being revamped; proposals for a national health insurance are under review, along with a 10 point strategy for revitalising the health system. We have to deal with mortality and the impact of HIV and AIDS through improving our prevention strategies, as well as new treatment measures.
Policy has been adjusted, and from April 2010, new measures will be implemented to begin antiretroviral treatment when CD4 count falls below 350 for tuberculosis (TB) infected and pregnant women and for all HIV infected infants. We will invest R8.4 billion in this regard. Key performance indicators were developed to enhance the effectiveness our public healthcare system, bearing in mind that in some cases our public hospitals are not that bad. For example, the first heart transplant in the world was done in a public hospital in Cape Town.
Ladies and gentlemen, about 70 percent of South Africans are under the age of 35. More than half of our population still have their entire working lives ahead of them. Being such a youthful country poses enormous challenges as well as opportunities for us. It is for this reason that we spend billions of rands on education, actually the lion share of the national budget.
We have a plan to revitalise education to ensure effective learning and teaching. Billions of rands have been allocated as subsidies for universities and for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme to enhance access. Education and skills development will really continue to be our key investment areas.
Amongst the outcomes of this visit, we agreed that the United Kingdom and South Africa will work together to develop links between Further Education and Training (FET) colleges to help South Africa to tackle its unemployment through skills development. We are also going to establish a South Africa and United Kingdom Next Generation Forum to deepen links between young people who will be our next generation of leaders.
Proposed collaborations in creating centres of excellence and revitalising technical colleges are most welcome indeed as a contribution to our skills drive. This should include investment in information and communications technology (ICT) in the schools as proposed.
During my meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Thursday, we agreed to work with FIFA and the Global Campaign for Education in their One Goal campaign, aimed at harnessing the power of the 2010 FIFA World Cup for the benefit of education for all. The intention is to ensure that 72 million children, who should be in primary school but cannot do so due to poverty, receive their basic right to education. This should be one of the greatest spin offs of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on African soil.
Amongst the ambassadors of the campaign is the captain of Bafana-Bafana Aaron Mokoena who is providing good leadership to his peers in this regard. We will provide full support to the campaign.
Esteemed guests;
We are engaged in massive infrastructure development, and intend to spend over 846 billion rand in this regard. Roads, bridges, dams, electricity supply and a host of other projects will be undertaken during this term of government, while we are also working on plans for the next 10 to 20 years.
That is why we say our country currently looks like a huge construction site, as projects are ongoing in every sphere. It is well known that we faced challenges with regards to energy. We have embarked on a number of strategies to address this.
In addition to minor interventions such as promoting the installation of solar water geysers and energy efficient light bulbs, South Africa has through its utility, Eskom, begun the construction of projects such as the Medupe and Kusile power stations, as well as Ingula hydroelectrically scheme, all which should be complete by 2014. One of our key focus areas is to change the face of rural areas, through supporting water, sanitation and rural housing development on a visible scale in the next three years.
Ladies and gentlemen, the mining sector contributes about five percent of our gross domestic product (GDP), and employs about 500 000 people. It is the main foreign exchange earner for South Africa. The sector is dominated by the platinum group of metals, followed by gold and coal.
We would like to reiterate here, as we have done in other forums during this visit that the nationalisation of mines is not government policy and there is no law that authorises the nationalisation of mineral resources.
The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act recognises the state as the custodian of all natural resources in the country and regulates the approval and renewal of mineral rights and licences.
It is important to also emphasise that while the policy on minerals and mining that we have, does not make provision for nationalisation of mining assets, it also does not preclude the State from participating actively in mining. That is why the African Exploration, Mining and Financing Company a wholly state owned company, is active in this industry.
Allow me to use this opportunity to indicate that we are concerned about a widely held view within the investment fraternity, that there is some illegal mining which is taking place in South Africa. Such mining is said to be negatively impacting on the productive environment of legal mining operations. We are taking this matter very seriously as government and it is being investigated. We have also announced an amnesty period as an attempt to encourage any existing illegal miners to end their illegal activities, or face the full might of the law.
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a global village and some solutions to our challenges have to be global. We are encouraged by the manner in which we continue to work positively with the Unite Kingdom on various matters that affect particularly the African continent.
At our bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Brown we agreed that United Kingdom and South Africa will work together towards the reform of the international financial institutions, to make them more effective, accountable and legitimate. We also welcome United Kingdom support for permanent African representation on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to enable the UNSC to better address issues of peace and security across the globe.
We will work together in various international forums such as the G20, with South Africa’s goal being to promote the interests of the African continent in particular and the developing world in general.
Esteemed guests,
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is literally just three months away. The project has enabled us to invest and develop massive infrastructure such as stadia, airport and road upgrades and others. We have created work as well as training opportunities in the process. As said earlier, we will continue to spend on infrastructure beyond the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and there will be many opportunities for business and investment.
South Africa and the United Kingdom are great sporting nations and to our friends in the United Kingdom we look forward to warmly welcoming many football fans to the finest 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament you have ever seen. Everything is in place for the tournament. Security and various other logistical issues have been taken care of.
Ladies and gentlemen in our State of the Nation address last month, we declared the year 2010 as a year of action, and a year of doing things differently in our country. It is a year of ensuring that everything we do is informed by tangible outcomes and measurable outputs. I therefore challenge you as the business community to turn decisions taken at the business seminar into practical implementation.
The meeting of the next trade and investment committee review should be able to receive reports of tangible progress and accelerate our bilateral relationship. We want to be performance based in everything we do, as a new culture and a new way of doing things in South Africa.
As we end the visit, we extend our sincere gratitude to her majesty the queen for her gracious invitation and exceptionally warm welcome and hospitality extended to our delegation. This has indicated to us that the relations between the two countries are taken very seriously indeed.
Let me thank both the South African and United Kingdom business delegations for a job well done during this visit. As government we can only create an enabling environment. It is up to you as business to take the process further, and use the opportunities that are opened by bilateral relations at a governmental level.
I thank you!
Issued by: The Presidency
5 March 2010
Source: The Presidency (http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/)
