President Cyril Ramaphosa has used his final day in New York to address concerns of businesses thinking about investing in South Africa.
The President, supported by his Trade and Industry and Finance Ministers, met with the CEOs of top companies and used a seminar with several business leaders.
He explained his government’s work to expand the country’s economy while making the case for greater investment in the country.
It was an engagement for the government to better understand what worries investors while offering greater insight into this administration’s plans to reach their ambitious investment target of $100 billion over five years.
“It is our intention, through this investment drive, to substantially expand the presence of US companies in South Africa. Among other things, this requires that we improve the investment environment in the country and that we take decisive measures to address the key structural challenges in our economy. We are, therefore, investing significantly in our education and skills development programmes, using our competition policies to create opportunities for new market entrants, reducing the cost of business and developing our economic infrastructure,” says Ramaphosa.
He explained that the country had embarked on a new path of renewal and growth, finalising a new Mining Charter, cleaning up state-owned enterprises while going to great lengths to contextualise the land expropriation debate within an international context.
“Our aim is to unlock the economic potential of our country, which has been constrained for decades by policies of racial exclusion. For generations, black South Africans were denied opportunities to own assets, establish businesses, acquire skills and enter professions. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the patterns of ownership and usage of land,” he says.
The President earlier also spoke at a United Nation High Level meeting on ending Tuberculosis by the SDG deadline of 2030.
“We would like to see the declaration emanating from this High-Level Meeting embracing the ‘Key Asks’ and setting in motion the bold response needed to end the global Tuberculosis epidemic. Investing in research and development is critical if we are to develop new diagnostics, vaccines and medicines and find innovative ways to deal with the social determinants of Tuberculosis and its transmission. It is only with new tools that we can achieve the dramatic reduction in the incidence of TB needed to ensure total elimination of this disease by 2030 or earlier,” says Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa returns to South Africa later on Thursday and will arrive back in the country on Friday morning.
President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses the CEO Roundtable Discussion during the Trade and Investment Promotion segment at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York.
