JOHANNESBURG - President Cyril Ramaphosa was due to meet the chief executives of commercial banks and leaders of multilateral development finance institutions on Tuesday to assess progress made in efforts to intensify infrastructure investment, his office said.
In a statement, the Presidency said the discussions in Cape Town would also reflect on the implementation of urgent reforms identified by the government as prerequisites for reviving infrastructure investment.
In his state of the nation address in Parliament last week, Ramaphosa said infrastructure development was at the centre of the government’s agenda for inclusive economic growth and creating jobs.
The Presidency said Ramaphosa's inaugural meeting with executives would seek to enhance collaboration among stakeholders "with a view to setting in motion an aggressive public sector build programme to create jobs, realise inclusive growth and facilitate spatial justice".
Yesterday, Ramaphosa said that a youth employment programme launched last week will help create young entrepreneurs, although it is not a panacea for South Africa's chronic unemployment problem.
The country's official unemployment rate was unchanged at its previous record high of 29.1 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2019, Statistics South Africa said in a report last Tuesday.
The report, based on Stats SA's latest quarterly labour force survey, showed that the percentage of young people aged 15 to 24 years who were not in employment, education or training increased from 31.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 to 32 percent in the last three months of 2019.
On Monday, Ramaphosa said the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention launched on the eve of his state of the nation address last Thursday was a strategic national plan which would prioritise action to tackle joblessness among young people.
In the latest edition of a weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said his government would continue to work with business, labour and civil society to ensure that "the burden of unemployment does not continue to weigh down our young people, crush their spirits and cause them to become despondent".