Cape Town – Western Cape Premier Helen Zille says the province is the leader of job creation throughout the country
Zille was speaking during at the State of the Province Address, her 10th address as Premier of the province.
She told members of the provincial legislature (MPLs) that since taking office back in 2009, the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey showed that the province had gained 490 000 new jobs since the 4th quarter of 2009.
She says the secret to creating jobs is the culture of good governance which can be seen in the achievement of full sets of financially unqualified audits, 11 out of 12 clean departmental audits as well as coming up tops on the Presidency’s Monitoring and Evaluation unit’s ratings for five years running.
“Our unemployed rate is the lowest in South Africa on the broad definition, which is I believe, the measure that should be used because it includes unemployed people who have given up looking for work,” she says.
“Our broad unemployed rate is a full 8.2 percent points lower than Gauteng and a full 13.8 points lower than the national figure.
“Western Cape also has the lowest rural unemployment rate in country, at just 14 percent which is the lowest recorded since this measure was instituted.”
Zille says business confidence has been kept at 10 points higher than the national average.
“The massive switch in business confidence to the Western Cape represents a significant shift in sentiment since the 1990s when business confidence was traditionally higher in Gauteng," she adds.
“Since the start of this term, we have secured over R5.9 billion worth of investments for the Western Cape through our excellent economic development and investment agency, Wesgro. This resulted in 1 865 new jobs from 2014 to 2016.”