Gauteng 'to work with business to create jobs'

GAUTENG's development agencies would work this year towards providing additional certainty to business in order to inspire investment, aiming for a "conducive environment" for attracting foreign investment as well as the expansion of local businesses, Gauteng economic development MEC Qedani Mahlangu said on Friday

Ms Mahlangu had raised eyebrows ahead of her budget speech by saying Gauteng was "not interested" in investors that were unwilling to procure 90% of their labour and raw materials locally, as the province had sufficient raw materials to provide "no reason" to import.

Outlining her department’s R912m 2012-13 budget spend to the Gauteng legislature on Friday, Ms Mahlangu was uncontroversial, saying her department would continue to focus on a number of joint initiatives with business that would result in local skills development, while support for small and medium-size enterprises would be increased to foster localisation and create jobs.

To this end, R112m would be allocated to the department’s small and medium enterprises development agency, an increase from the R45m last year that supported 83 small, medium and micro enterprises and resulted in 1009 new jobs.

Ms Mahlangu said R100m was to be allocated to the department's Gauteng Enterprise Propeller programme to train youth with technical expertise to support entrepreneurship. She said support for the Y-age project, which aims to create 100000 entrepreneurs and 1- million new jobs, would continue.

Support for the province’s automotive industry was now “paying off” with the establishment of five start-up black economic empowerment companies as part of Ford’s Supplier Incubation Facility, which was a “world first”.

The budget speech came under criticism from the Democratic Alliance's Gauteng spokesman on economic development, Gavin Lewis, who said the department was "overspending and underperforming". The budget "conceals more than it reveals" and again there was no clarity on how the province's development plans were to be effectively implemented, especially in light of the global slowdown.

Mr Lewis said the Y-age project job targets were "nonsense projections". If the department wanted to support small businesses and create jobs it should look to reducing red tape and implement programmes such as the youth subsidy, he said.