EAST LONDON – Following the BRICS roadshow that took place in the province in May and in June of this year the partnership and business conference between Buffalo City and China took place on 29th-30th June at the International Convention Center in East London.
This prestigious event was designed to reignite the economy after it took a devistating blow due to covid-19 that is according to MEC of Eastern Cape Department of Economic Development Environment affairs and Tourism Mlungisi Mvoko. The MEC had plenty to say about the readiness of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality for investments into the metro, making mention to red tape and how it has hindered business as well as the City.
“Some of the concerns from investors that we must tend to attend are; skills deficits, skills migration, poor management of infrastructure, policy uncertainty, high cost of compliancy, access to land etc.” said the MEC.
Well it is no question that the metro is underperforming, foreign investment has been of help in reducing unemployment and has brought numerous opportunities to the BCM.
The partnership will bring about new opportunities for many sectors including, industrial development, airline opportunities and tourism to name a few, but most importantly agriculture and energy.
All of these great opportunities, the foreign companies investing and the industrial areas being revived will be all worth nothing if the red tape issue in the municipality is not eradicated.
The MEC told a story addressing the Mayor of BCMM Cllr. Princess Faku in particular. Prior to that the MEC mentioned that town planning must be responsible to business deals and needs of businesses and that this is further linked to turnaround times for zoning applications approval of plans for business development.
In the story the MEC told relating to this he said,” Last weekend I was sitting with other gentleman in a plane and they were discussing about the efficiency of government and they mentioned the BCM and how they submit plans, one plan was in the city for 2 years and after 2 years they decided to give up on it they listed a number of their applications and I said to them I’ll talk to the mayor about this and they told me,” please don’t because we are busy with another one with the attitude of the officials there we are going to lose what we are doing there. We are taking a chance now because this one has support”.
What hurt the most is that most of them were in the townships what hurt the most was that they had the funds, they received funds for the business but the department has to approve their applications on time but the town planning and rezoning decided not to do it.”
This makes you wonder how many applications were stuck in the system for how long and what differences would they have made in our community. The plan that was stuck for 2 years was worth R1.2 billion according to the MEC a billion rand that could have made an improvement to the BCMM.
As the Conference concludes and the contracts signed on the evening all can be done now by citizens of the Metro is to prepare themselves in terms skills and hope that the red tape issue comes to an end to ensure that young entrepreneurs thrive.