The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has invited applications from suitably qualified parties to undertake an economic activity and opportunity assessment of mining districts targeted for socioeconomic development as part of a Special Presidential Package (SPP).

As part of the SPP, the living conditions of mining communities in and around Rustenburg, Lephalale, Sekhukhune, Klerksdorp, Emalahleni, Welkom, the West Rand and Carletonville would be improved in a regional and phased approached.

This would be driven by a Local Economic Development (LED) Technical Task Team, of which the IDC was a member.

The scope of the assessment for each mining region would be required to include an economic profile of each region, a comprehensive sector analysis, the identification of exploitable opportunities within the existing and potential sectors, and a trade and business activity assessment and analysis.

The successful bidder would also be required to consolidate LED projects identified within and outside municipal LED strategies and align these with the objectives and resources of mining and social labour plans.

This would include establishing the progression of projects within the project pipeline; ascertaining challenges and funding requirements; identifying current funders; identifying and proposing interventions for addressing challenges; developing evaluation criteria; packaging the projects that fulfilled most of the development indicators; and identifying enterprise development and other business support needs.

“The successful bidder would also be required to engage big businesses to ascertain potential future investments as well as establish institutional structures and collaboration agreements between the private and public sector,” the tender documents stated.

The contract would further involve an assessment of current public economic bulk infrastructure and utility services in relation to current economic activity, as well as an evaluation of a possible alignment between regional economic growth and planned economic bulk infrastructure and utility services.

The service provider would be required to consult with the LED Technical Task Team, regional public sector stakeholders, civic leadership and private sector and industry associations throughout the assessment process.

“Once the assessment study is completed, the successful bidder will develop a monitoring and evaluation model and an economic development metric package, and identify LED projects that inherently achieve the SPP’s objectives,” said the IDC.

Interested parties had until March 6 to submit their applications.