EWC dampens investment enthusiasm in US – IRR’s Frans Cronje
The South African government’s ‘repeated commitment to expropriation without compensation has been allowed to compete for airtime in the United States with the narrative of reform that came out of the ANC leadership change in December 2017,’ says IRR CEO Frans Cronje.
This had created ‘great uncertainty’ in the US, and ‘has dampened investment enthusiasm’.
Cronje was commenting after the first week of private and public meetings in Washington that form part of the IRR’s international campaign this month to generate support for protecting and extending the property rights of all South Africans.
Cronje said: ‘One thing that became quite apparent during our first week in the United States was the degree of confusion and misinformation about the EWC proposal. It was assumed in some places that the proposal related mainly to land and the further implications were not well understood, especially where it came to regulatory expropriations – in the security industry for example.
‘But regardless of the misunderstandings, the EWC question is clearly a source of great uncertainty and has dampened investment enthusiasm following the political changes that occurred in South Africa in December.’