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Boosting small, medium and micro enterprises was mooted as one way of helping Joburg meets its economic growth targets.
INFORMAL traders, hawkers, aspirant entrepreneurs and economists made the last recommendations on the City’s 2040 vision at a Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) indaba on economic development at the Parktonian Hotel on Friday, 30 September.
 The indaba marked the end of the thematic week for economic growth, which started on 24 September and coincided with Smart Cities Week. Economic Growth Week focused on whether the City could achieve the economic growth targets it had set itself and if it could successfully transform itself into a global economic powerhouse.
Speaking on the day, the portfolio head for finance, Geoffrey Makhubo, said that in growing the economy, the City should ascertain whether it could bring economic opportunities closer to people or bring people closer to economic opportunities through building economic nodes in their neighbourhoods.
In this case, the spatial development of the future was significant, he said. “As Johannesburg is getting smarter, do you create new thriving cities and let the declining ones die out? Spatial development is key in ensuring that the poor do not spend a majority of their income on transport costs while the rich earn more and walk to work,” he explained.
Liberty Life economist Tendani Mantshimuli said economic inequalities were adverse in Johannesburg and that the City needed to address these through the informal economy. “You should take people off the streets and get them employment,” she said.
Joburg should look into revitalising trade schools to acquire artisans because unemployment was greater in Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub, she added.
Artisans
“Not all people are academics. There is something wrong with thinking that a functional citizen is the one who has an academic qualification. If those kinds of schools are formed we will expand our tax base.”
 MMC Geoffrey Makhubo: Spatial development key to economic growth (Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg)However, she warned that the process could be laborious. “You will not turn around the economy in one day.”
Mantshimuli said the global economy was volatile, which posed a challenge for economic growth. “Let us identify the problems like inequality and education to avert protests,” she said.
The City should increase its support of small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) because the sector was labour intensive and could go a long way towards alleviating poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Another participant, a representative of the Business Place and an entrepreneur, said the City had devised many ineffective strategies. To get those strategies to be effective, Joburg should dovetail them with provincial strategies on economic development.
“The City should extend services like the Business Place to Orange Farm and Diepsloot and establish a central portal where all opportunities for SMMEs could be listed and an easier supply chain management system could be communicated,” she said.
Manufacturing
Joburg’s economic development department should facilitate existing opportunities in manufacturing and seek finance from the Industrial Development Corporation to help poor communities establish manufacturing enterprises in their neighbourhoods, one City official said.
Tshepo Philane, an entrepreneur from Soweto’s leafy Diepkloof, who operates a business in the city centre, said the municipality should provide incentives for small enterprises in townships the same way it did for those in the CBD. Vacant shops on council land should be turned into offices where SMMEs could get assistance and skills development.
Philane lamented that government programmes were not aligned, saying that people should be allowed to operate businesses in their private residences because of the escalated costs of renting business space.
Video
Economists, business people and informal traders gathered at the Parktonian Hotel to map out strategies to grow Joburg's economy. Watch video. |
Uche Mae, a professor of chemical engineering at the Vaal University of Technology, said the City should introduce waste management practices to create employment. Other solutions he offered were that professionals should share their expertise and invaluable knowledge with the less privileged in helping to build a common society and reduce inequalities.
Other notable views were that the City should invest more in urban development zones to create new business centres and stimulate development and economic growth where necessary.
The GDS civic outreach programme was an eight-week public participation process in the City’s Growth and Development Strategy. It has solicited a myriad of notions and opinions about how best to govern Joburg over the next 30 years.
City officials said all comments and suggestions would be collated into a single document and handed over to the City’s central strategy unit, which would produce a blueprint that would serve as the yardstick with which Johannesburg could gauge its progress over the next three decades.
The review of the GDS was launched on 2 August. The document charts prospects for the next five-year political term. It was first drafted in 2006 and was now placed under review to ensure its objectives and guidelines met the needs of a dynamic urban environment.
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