State bid to speed up infrastructure

SHORT-term planning and political uncertainty could slow down its R800bn infrastructure spending plan, the government admits.

It has nominated infrastructure development as a key contributor in its quest to create new jobs and boost economic growth. However, bureaucratic delays and an inefficient public sector have been identified as among the areas that needed to be improved if the infrastructure plan was to work.

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Cabinet ministers, premiers, mayors and the South African Local Government Association attended an infrastructure conference on Friday, to thrash out ways to integrate all the state’s infrastructure plans.

The conference was organised by the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, which aims to pull together all the planning for the infrastructure drive.

Mr Motlanthe told the conference on Friday that “more needs to be done and it needs to be done faster”, by “addressing capacity constraints in the state, promoting wider partnerships in society and improving co-ordination”.

“The test of our effectiveness will be how well we can co-ordinate and integrate our work and the different elements of the infrastructure plan,” he said.

Mr Motlanthe said: “The experience of fast-growing economies is that their planning horizon is longer than one electoral cycle and that they invest heavily in infrastructure.”

The commission would therefore develop a 20-year infrastructure pipeline, to plan ahead and “move away from the stopstart syndrome around the building of infrastructure”.

“This will allow us to ensure better financial mobilisation, provide greater certainty to the construction industry, give educational institutions a framework

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around which to plan their skills development strategies, and to provide a road map for investors and communities.”

Cabinet ministers represented on the commission announced after the conference that planning would be separated into 17 areas, to be known as strategic integrated projects.

They would monitor 150 infrastructure programmes for rail, road and ports; dams, irrigation systems and sanitation; new energy generation plants, transmission lines and electricity distribution to households; communication and broadband; and social infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and universities.

Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said regulation and administrative bottlenecks would receive attention, as the government was introducing uniform standards meant to bypass processes that could slow down projects.

Bureaucracy often delayed infrastructure development, Mr Patel said, “because they don’t know which [state] sphere is managing it and because of a lack of a comprehensive business plan”.

Teams of administrators and politicians would be appointed for specific projects.

Co-ordination of the projects across all three spheres of government would ensure plans were not delayed should there be political changes at any level of government.

Planning and implementation would be centralised at national level, to achieve economies of scale, he said.

Procurement is not co-ordinated among departments, resulting in state entities paying more. “In many cases the state pays more than private individuals walking into a shop,” Mr Patel said.

The tender system would also be changed, so that its scope went beyond one city or province.

Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti said central planning and co-ordination would help “slow-spending structures” develop infrastructure.

“There’s no problem of a lack of money.

“There is an institutional problem,” he said. With Sapa