DURBAN - South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry and the World Bank Group today announced an advisory services partnership aimed at improving the business environment for domestic entrepreneurs and undertaking policy and institutional reform to enhance foreign direct investment inflows.
The partnership will focus on three key reform areas: business regulation, investment policy and promotion, and market regulation and competition policy.
The advisory agreement formalises the partnership between the Government of South Africa and the World Bank Group to support the national reform effort led by the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Economic Development and National Treasury. World Bank Group support to the Government of South Africa will be delivered in partnership with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and the Prosperity Fund of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The project will deploy a Country Private Sector Diagnostic, a standard World Bank Group tool to identify industry sectors which can attract significant domestic and foreign investments and deliver positive development impacts in the near term, if key inhibitors are addressed.
"Support from World Bank Group and its development partners promotes South Africa’s growth agenda. The dti and InvestSA hope to gain insights into best practice from the partnership. I would like to assure you that we are committed to addressing the employment deficits that we face, and this will start with providing the right environment for the private sector to flourish. The four-year programme will be led and coordinated by InvestSA," said Lionel October, Director General, the dti.
Commitment to the national reform programme was articulated at the highest level within government structures. President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation address on Thursday, February 7, 2019, committed to ensure business competitiveness and an enabling business environment as a cornerstone of the drive for both domestic and foreign direct investment and the jobs that they are expected to generate. To this end, the South African government has, amongst others, set the target of improving its current rank of 82/190 in order to be, within three years, among the top 50 economies in the annual Doing Business Report published by the World Bank Group.
"IFC is committed to working across the World Bank Group to help South Africa achieve best practices and real impact in its reform efforts. The target set by President Ramaphosa of generating investment of $100 billion within five years is important. It sets the tone for the policies needed to attract foreign direct investment," said Kevin Njiraini, IFC Regional Director for Southern Africa.
Early deliverables under the support program will be inputs into the Government of South Africa’s Investment strategy, which is expected to address not just horizontal barriers to private sector investment but also sector specific enablers for growth and employment creation.