ANC rejects job-creating Red Tape Impact Assessment Bill

Yesterday, the ANC rejected the DA’s Red Tape Impact Assessment Bill that was designed to make it easier for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMMEs) to do business and therefore, create jobs for the 9 million unemployed South Africans.

Essentially, the ANC have rejected an opportunity to decrease the sheer volume of red tape that stands in the way of small businesses and therefore in the way of economic growth and job creation.

Year on year Zuma promises, without any solution, to make it easier for businesses to launch and grow. Now that the DA has tabled a solution, the ANC has rejected it. We therefore call on the ANC to table its own red-tape reduction proposal to parliament, setting out how it will end the strangling red tape crisis in SA.

The DA’s Bill sought to create an enabling environment that will stimulate small business growth and create jobs by addressing the following problems associated with dense bureaucracy and red tape in South Africa:

- The general absence of red tape impact assessments;

- Lack of cost calculations of red tape to business;

- A regulatory environment that is not “Business Friendly” and fraught with inconsistencies; and

- Limited co-ordination across the different spheres of government.

In the DA-run Western Cape, the Red Tape Reduction Unit has achieved a great success rate of 90% in the nearly 4 000 cases it has dealt with since its 2009 inception.

The fact is that we need to adapt to international best practice with regards to lowering the regulatory hurdles facing small businesses if we are to have any hope of improving our economic growth which is vital for job creation.

Given the dismal state of the economy, due in no small part to the actions and poor decisions of the ANC, it is all the more imperative to create the environment for SMMEs to grow.

Red tape is ultimately hitting the poorest of the poor which further highlights the ANC’s inability to solve this crisis.

The fact that the ANC rejected it, speaks volumes about their lack of commitment to ensuring that SMME’s are given the support they need and South Africa needs, to prosper.

Issued by Henro Kruger, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Small Business Development, 11 May 2017