Government’s continued commitment to improve key infrastructure and social development programmes was highlighted emphatically in the President’s state-of-the-nation address to Parliament earlier this year, when he announced that the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA) would serve as catalyst to efforts to halve unemployment by 2014. Under ASGISA, large investments will be made in various sectors to improve infrastructure.
The President announced a massive investment initiative and promised that government would tackle the skills shortages and speed up the process of achieving even higher levels of real economic growth. Government intends investing R372 billion within three years in order to push economic growth to higher levels. Business confidence levels generally remain upbeat and private-sector investment sentiment remains strong.