Pretoria - The Gauteng human settlements department will be embarking on domestic and international capital-raising roadshows in the next few months in an attempt to secure about R30 billion for mega projects planned in the province.
A total of 19 mega projects are planned for Gauteng, involving a more than R100 billion economic corridor investment that aims to deliver more than 800 000 houses within 30 residential developments spread across the five development corridors in Gauteng.
Paul Mashatile, Gauteng MEC for human settlements, said on Thursday on the sidelines of the Gauteng Infrastructure Funding Summit in Midrand, that most of these 19 mega projects would kick off in this financial year. But they would be developed in phases, some of which will be over five or six years.
Mashatile was adamant that all 19 mega projects would be completed within the next 10 years.
Addressing the summit, Mashatile said about R10 billion a year was available in Gauteng specifically for human settlements, but “much more was needed".
Mashatile said the funding they hoped to raise would not only be for human settlements but for infrastructure broadly, including roads, energy and the expansion of the Gautrain to new areas.
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He said the banks and pension fund sectors had been invited to the summit, but he had already had “positive” engagements with the pension funds last year, including the Public Investment Corporation.
“The pension fund industry in South Africa is worth well above R7 trillion, so we are not talking small. There is money in this country and we need to look at how best do we use it to develop for ourselves,” he said.
Mashatile said they would be embarking on a capital-raising roadshow after the summit to give opportunities to potential funders to have bilateral meetings with them.
Their immediate focus would be on the domestic market, but they would later embark on an international roadshow to attract foreign direct investment, he added.
“You will be happy to know that even though we are junk status, people have hope that we are able to hold our economy together.
Confidence
“Investors don’t put their money where they think the government has no confidence to put its own resources. So government must lead the way and increase public sector investments to attract private-sector investments,” he said.
Mashatile said there was a lot of foreign interest to invest in South Africa, particularly Gauteng and referred to a meeting he had in Dubai where people were interested in investing about $5 billion (R67.9 billion) in the province.
Mbulelo Tshangana, the director-general of the national department of human settlements, said KfW Development Bank from Germany had indicated it had about 200 million euros it wanted to use to fund some of the mega projects.