Address by President JG Zuma to Annual General Meeting of Business Unity South Africa; Sandton Convention Centre, Sandton, May 11 2010

The President of BUSA, Ms Futhi Mtoba
BUSA CEO, Mr Jerry Vilakazi,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is always an honour and a pleasure to meet with Business Unity SA.

We share the common goal of working to achieve sustainable economic growth and development in our country.

Our meetings are therefore gatherings of compatriots who are driven by the quest for prosperity for our country.

As you are aware, we marked the first anniversary of our administration on Sunday. It has been a hectic but very fulfilling and successful year for all of us.

We have been working hard to introduce new ways of doing things and to change the way government works to improve service delivery.

This included creating capacity in the Presidency to lead government. In this regard, we created Ministries in the Presidency responsible for monitoring and evaluation as well as the National Planning Commission to help us achieve our vision of doing things differently.

Earlier today we held the inaugural meeting of the National Planning Commission. Government has often taken a sectoral and short-term view on planning which has hampered development.

Taking a long-term and independent view will add impetus, focus and coherence to our work. This will no doubt lead to an improved performance in government.

By involving wider society in its work, it will rally the nation around a common vision, so that we can all participate in the realisation of the South Africa we want to live in.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are recovering from a very harsh global economic recession. It is hard to believe that the deadly combination of poor regulation and unethical behaviour by a few people in a few countries could do so much damage.

They damaged not only their own economies and their businesses, but helped to put millions out of work in many countries around the world. In our own country, we lost close to a million jobs.

The figures in Statistics South Africa's report on employment, which indicated that some of the jobs won back in the final quarter of 2009 were lost again in the early part of this year, is cause for concern and renewed action.

It is clear that some sectors of the economy are still suffering, even though overall we are beginning to grow fairly well again.

As we predicted, although the economy was turning positive, the impact of the recession might still lead to some job losses.

We have been working well together as the partnership of business, government, labour and the community sector, implementing the Framework Agreement for South Africa's Response to the International Economic Crisis.

We developed and introduced a range of interventions, including programmes to help firms avoid retrenchments.

As you would be aware, the IDC has allocated R6.1 billion to support companies that are hard-hit by the economic crisis. Applications to the value of R1.1 billion have been approved.

These programmes are still running at the IDC and the CCMA. I urge all employers who might still face the prospects of layoffs due to the recession, to use these facilities that we have created so that they do not have to retrench workers unnecessarily.

Compatriots,

This is an important meeting for us in government, as we value a strategic partnership with Organised Business.

Successful economies the world over are characterised by the strong and strategic nature of the engagement between the public and private sector.

We have a good track record already of working together as business and government. We worked very well as a team in profiling South Africa at the World Economic Forum in Davos and during the State Visit to the United Kingdom.

The South African visibility at WEF in Davos was unparalleled. To this day, those who attended WEF in Davos still talk about the effective marketing of the South African brand.

We have done well in other areas of work too, for example in the response to the global economic crisis, working together with labour and the community sector.

We want to develop stronger working relations with business in the areas of Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment, enterprise development, skills, youth and SMME development as well as the promotion of investment and exports.

We need your views as well on a host of other programmes which are designed to change the way government works.

We have produced the Industrial Policy Action Plan which provides the framework of our intentions and what outputs we would like from various sectors in the economy.

Business has to help us realise that vision of an industrialised South Africa. We need you to establish industries and create decent jobs that would lead to a better life for millions of South Africans.

Most importantly, we need you to carry the brand, products and services of our country to all corners of the world. The world is open for business with South Africa and we must use that opportunity to grow our economy.

However, while encouraging the continued penetration of the traditional markets, we also urge you not to neglect the emerging power bloc in the South.

You will recall that despite a recession, we managed to put together a delegation of over 200 companies as part of the United Kingdom State Visit.

However, a strategic and forward looking meeting of leaders and business from India, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and China in Brazil only attracted a handful of South African business people.

Clearly, we need to align our respective visions. We have a pending State Visit to India next month. We must not miss the opportunity to leverage a relationship with one of the world's largest markets.

Distinguished delegates,

We need to have regular interaction as government and BUSA to discuss all these strategic issues. This means that unity and coordination within business is critical, for us to be able to have this crucial ongoing interface.

Ladies and gentlemen,

While urging you to explore the emerging powerful economies of Brazil, India and China, I must also remind you to explore the 1 billion people strong African market.

I have just returned from a wonderful meeting of the World Economic Forum in Dar es Salaam, on the shores of East Africa.

I returned from Dar greatly encouraged about Africa's prospects. A recent report from the IMF shows that Sub-Saharan Africa is the third fastest growing region in the world, after China and India.

Africa will grow at a rate of around 6% into the future, and even faster if some obstacles to growth are reduced or removed.

I also learned at this meeting that economic analysts are now certain that Africa came through the economic crisis much more smoothly than ever before.

In the past, when the United States or Europe sneezed, Africa caught a cold. This time we found that Africa was immunised. Many African countries did not go into recession, though their growth rates did weaken for a while. Many are firmly on the road to recovery. Why is this?

Economists believe, I am told, that one of the main factors immunising Africa is the sound macroeconomic policies that have been followed in many African countries for some years now.

If we consider their budget deficits, their foreign debt, their rate of inflation, and their foreign reserves, African countries entered this crisis stronger than ever before.

Many African countries had stronger macroeconomic policies than some countries in the north that we used to be told were examples of how to behave.

I have no doubt that one of the main reasons for better economic policies in Africa is that more African governments are becoming more accountable to their citizens?

Democracy and accountability seem to go along with better economic policies. This is good news for Africa.

Ladies and gentlemen, Africa is a very exciting place to be. Our location and links to Africa certainly helped us get through this crisis without greater damage.

Our involvement in African development in the future will be one of the major factors that influence how strongly we grow.

Some of you here today had the privilege, like me, of attending the economic conference in Dar es Salaam.

I also learned in Tanzania was how real the East African Community is. Tanzanians, Kenyans, Rwandans, Ugandans and Burundians all think of themselves as East Africans.

They have reduced the trade barriers between them, and they are also reducing the barriers to the movement of people between the countries of the East African Community.

While we were there, Rwanda announced that it had removed barriers that were preventing other East Africans from working in Rwanda. There are similar announcements almost every day.

This is how African economic integration is meant to be. We in Southern Africa can learn a lot from our East African brothers and sisters.

As you are aware, we continue to engage in other key international platforms to promote our interests and to advance national and continental goals and priorities.

Next month I will be returning to the G20 discussions. This time they will be held in Toronto, Canada.

The G20 Summit structure proved last year that there is nothing better than an urgent discussion between leaders, when faced with the prospects of an international economic melt-down.

There can be no doubt, too, that the G20 has been effective because it represents a much larger grouping of significant economic nations than the G7 or G8 which previously addressed such issues.

But, the G20 is still work in progress, and we expect that it will continue to evolve into an effective institution to address such issues in the future.

We need to be careful that the G20 does not ignore or weaken the very important global multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, and the International Labour Organisation, but that it actually helps to make them more effective.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am privileged to have joined you during an elective conference. Let me congratulate Mr Brian Molefe and the outgoing leadership team for steering this ship forward so successfully to this point.

We congratulate the new President and her team.

We wish BUSA strength and growth, as this organisation has a very important role to play in this country.

Let me reiterate that we will continue to work for a stronger partnership with business.

We look forward to ongoing fruitful engagement with BUSA, to tackle the serious socio-economic matters affecting our country.

I thank you.

Issued by The Presidency, May 11 2010

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