President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday said the development of South Africa’s various infrastructure projects costing US$100 billion is key to the country’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery.
The president said this when he presided over the Infrastructure Preparation Round Table in the Johannesburg suburb of Midrand.
According to him, the round table’s task of identifying the projects for development would help create the much-needed employment for the country which lost two million jobs in the last quarter due to the pandemic.
“We have identified infrastructure as the key driving enabler in the growth that we want to engender,” Ramaphosa said.
He added: “Our infrastructure intervention will include large scale built projects, community and social infrastructure — but it will also include something we have often neglected: the maintenance of the very infrastructure.”
In this regard, Ramaphosa called on the infrastructure sector “to work with the government to rebuild our battered economy.”
Last month, Ramaphosa said South Africa would embark on a massive rollout of infrastructure projects to revive the ailing economy. The round table was a first step in achieving this goal, he said.
He said the roundtable was “the beginning of a more dedicated and structured approach to project preparation.”
“It paves the way for greater private sector participation in this crucial stage of the project life-cycle,” the president said.
NM/jn/APA