Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe,
Ms Futhi Mtoba, the President of Business Unity South Africa (BUSA),
The Chairperson of the Economic Cluster, Minister Gugile Nkwinti and Deputy Cluster Chairperson Minister Naledi Pandor,
Business Leaders and Captains of Industry,
Ministers,
Senior officials,
Let me extend a very warm welcome to the business delegation and all present here today.
Let me apologise for the postponement of the Summit which was scheduled for the 10th of March, due to events in North and West Africa that we had to attend to as members of the African Union.
Colleagues,
In just a few days, on the 21st of March, our country will mark Human Rights Day.
We will recall that fateful day in Sharpeville and Langa where scores of people were killed and others were injured by a brutal apartheid police force.
Those police officials were tasked with ensuring the continued subjugation of their compatriots.
However, the undying quest for freedom by the South African people propelled us to a free, non-racial, democratic South Africa.
We are proud of the fact that seventeen years into our democracy, we have managed to build a thriving constitutional democracy which enshrines human rights, promotes unity in diversity and entrenches socio-economic rights.
When we mark Human Rights Day, we will be celebrating our achievements and our progressive Constitution.
It is also significant that for the first time, Human Rights Day will be marked by all three arms of the State together, represented by the heads of the executive, judiciary and the legislature.
We will lead the country in celebrating freedom and in promoting the respect for human rights.
The three arms of the State may disagree at times on some issues, but we are united in saying to South Africans that they should respect and uphold the Constitution.
We have done well indeed to build the right political foundation.
I am reminding the Summit of these political achievements because we believe that together we have created the right political foundation to grow our economy and produce inclusive growth.
We must now work harder to achieve a more prosperous society, with an improved quality of life for all our people.
We reiterate that we want to live in a South Africa where millions more South Africans have decent employment opportunities, which has a modern infrastructure and a vibrant economy and where the quality of life is high.
We all have a responsibility to work hard to make this a reality, all of us as NEDLAC constituencies - business, government, labour and the community sector.
At our meeting with business last year, we discussed at great lengths, the successful 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, a project that all sectors had worked on together successfully in our country.
We agreed to meet again to take those discussions further, especially to see how we can use those World Cup lessons to grow our economy and create jobs.
In the State of the Nation Address we reaffirmed what we regard as our country’s biggest and most immediate challenge. We declared 2011 as a year of job creation through meaningful economic transformation.
The President’s Summit on Job Creation provides the opportunity to share thoughts on the matters raised in the meeting we held last year and also the State of the Nation Address.
We had outlined that having committed ourselves to five main priorities during this term of government, we felt the time had come for an intense focus on one critical one, job creation.
We had been doing well on the other four priorities – education, health, rural development and land reform and the fight against crime.
Since 1994 we have made substantial progress in transforming the economy to benefit the majority, but serious challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality remain.
We have had a long period of economic growth during the last 10 years, but it has not been strong on job creation. We need to find a solution.
At a policy level, let me reiterate that we believe in a mixed economy, where the state, private capital, cooperative and other forms of social ownership complement each other in an integrated way to eliminate poverty and foster shared economic growth.
This is an economy that is connected to the world, and which benefits from vibrant and balanced trade with the rest of the world.
We want an economy that is increasingly integrated into the Southern African region and our continent as a whole. The African continent has a market of one billion people as well as untapped natural resources.
We should use these resources to develop the continent and create a better life for the African peoples, while growing our own economy as well. Already, many South African companies are investing in the continent and that is a welcome development.
Linked to economic transformation, we are working towards deepening social transformation, through the realisation of socio-economic rights such as access to basic services.
We are implementing programmes to defeat poverty such as social security for the poor and the vulnerable as well as fair labour practices.
I am sure we will all agree at this forum that our most effective weapon in the campaign against poverty is the creation of decent work, and creating work requires faster economic growth.
We should at this meeting deliberate on how we are going to achieve those goals.
Recent economic signs are positive which makes us optimistic. The economy grew strongly in the last quarter of 2010.
The employment numbers recently turned positive. Generally, economic forecasts are positive, both for higher economic growth and for renewed employment creation.
However, although trends are positive, South Africa’s recovery is still slow by international standards.
Though last year we started to create more new jobs than we lost, we still have not got back to the level of employment that we had towards the end of 2008.
This calls for hard work from all sides.
As government we have been working to strengthen the legislative and policy frameworks to make it easier to do business in our country, and also to support emerging business as well as broad-based black economic empowerment.
We are keen to hear your suggestions on what else we can do.
We have developed a strong trade element to our bilateral and multilateral engagements and continue to promote trade relations with Africa and other continents.
We appreciate the support of BUSA in this regard, especially in enhancing the trade aspects of bilateral engagements.
We will next month join the BRIC forum, which, in addition to the India-Brazil-South Africa forum, expands our foothold in emerging markets. Our business community should use these relations to penetrate these markets and help us create decent jobs.
We are encouraged by recent inward investments. We have noticed that a number of foreign investors from France, Japan, China, India and the United States are boldly entering the local market.
We have also seen major commitments made by the automotive industry with foreign multinationals investing close to fourteen billion rand.
The question I wish to pose is - are there any other investment opportunities which we can still explore?
The purpose of this Summit is, therefore, to identify the constraints and bottlenecks whilst simultaneously identifying concrete investment opportunities.
We also need to clarify the sectors that hold the best opportunities for job creation.
We identified six sectors in our New Growth Path framework. These are infrastructure development, agriculture, mining and beneficiation, manufacturing, the green economy and tourism.
The most important point, is that we can only get to a consistently higher growth and job creation rate if we work together effectively.
The responsibility of business is to grow and to create jobs. The role of government is to create the conditions to encourage the kind of growth that creates jobs.
This meeting is therefore the beginning of a process of working together on specifically to boost job creation. We need unwavering commitment on both sides to ensure success in our respective roles, for the good of our country and its people.
We need to agree on how we are going to work together both within NEDLAC and also as government and business separately.
We will be meeting with labour on the 19th of April for a dialogue with that sector as well, on our respective roles in contributing to job creation.
We reiterate that every sector, every business entity regardless of size and every government department has a responsibility to contribute to this national objective of creating jobs.
With determination and commitment, we will be able to make 2011 truly a year of job creation.
We look forward to productive and fruitful deliberations.
I thank you.
Source: The Presidency
