President Cyril Ramaphosa believes that government’s efforts to cut the red tape holding back infrastructure development are beginning to bearing fruit.

Delivering the keynote address at Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa 2024 on Tuesday, held in Cape Town, he said that “unblocking projects” had been a recurring challenge within government.

“We have been focused on this in our reform journey; the blockages and delays.”

He said Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) had, to date, unblocked R25-billion of projects in the renewable energy space, for example.

“More work needs to be done, but our reforms are beginning to bear fruit. This is where the tyre hits the tar. This is what matters most.”

He also identified the process of reaching financial close on projects as another recurring challenge.

“It is very easy to conceptualise a project, but the crunch is closing the project; this matters the most.”

In a wide-ranging speech, Ramaphosa also noted that the private sector had to come to the party to a much larger degree should South Africa wish to meet its infrastructure goals.

“We need almost R4.8-trillion to address the infrastructure challenges we face as a country. We need that from both the public sector and the private sector – to a much larger extent.”

Ramaphosa noted that infrastructure remained an “enormous economic multiplier” providing benefits long after it had been built – “provided of course we maintain the infrastructure”.

“It is quite often a culture – we set up wonderful infrastructure facilities and don’t maintain them thereafter and they fall into disrepair.”

Construction Industry Has Transformed
Ramaphosa on Tuesday acknowledged that the South African construction industry had transformed significantly.

“The industry has been facing enormous challenges, but it is also an industry that has seen a great deal of transformation.

“The construction industry was largely the area of previously advantaged people in our country, but now previously disadvantaged people have come to the industry and they play very important roles.”

He added that government realised that the industry, with its more than 1.2-million employees, required “a reliable pipeline of projects that enables it and its suppliers to plan ahead”.