Vacancy: business buy-in

The business sector should buy into the government’s job creation plan as part of a greater “Team South Africa” effort to boost economic growth and employment in the country, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Friday.

Addressing KZN business leaders in Durban, Gordhan’s address followed his attendance at the Presidential Business Summit on Job Creation in Pretoria earlier that day.

The government has set a target of creating five million jobs by 2020. Gordhan said the private sector had a crucial role to play in creating jobs, as part of the government’s New Growth Path.

“If we want to grow our economy significantly and create jobs, we need to do extraordinary things. We can’t do things as we have done in the past. We all need to work together and all sectors of business, from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to big business, need to play their role,” he said.

“If we want to compete with China, India and Brazil, we need to drive a new level of ingenuity and a new culture around our work ethic as a nation… SMEs are an important factor in the South African economy because the sector employs 68 percent of the working population. However, the SME sector will need to have an even more important role in growing our economy and creating jobs,” added Gordhan.

“Over the next 10 years, they (big business) need to foster the development of small business and to connect them with other business opportunities,” he said.

“It is going to be a huge challenge to grow faster to levels of around 7 percent and create millions of jobs, but we need to ask ‘How can we do things better? How do we create a better Team South Africa? How do we promote South Africa in the global dynamics?’” - The Mercury