President to open inaugural SIDSSA

President Cyril Ramaphosa will on Tuesday open the inaugural Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium of South Africa (SIDSSA).

SIDSSA will be hosted virtually and will attract both a national and international audience.

The symposium will be held under the theme, ‘Investing in infrastructure for shared prosperity: now, next and beyond’ and comes at a critical juncture when South Africa charts a course for economic recovery in the post COVID-19 period.

“Government has affirmed that catalytic infrastructure investment can contribute to higher long-term growth, address spatial disparities, transform the economy and create much-needed jobs.

“The infrastructure projects earmarked to revive the economy will focus on the network industries of water, transport, energy and digital infrastructure, as well as sectors with high job absorption capacity, such as human settlements, agriculture and agro-processing,” said the Presidency in a statement.

It said the symposium is a culmination of a vigorous stakeholder consultative process over the past few weeks to mobilise support and cooperation on the revised Infrastructure Investment Plan.

The consultative process with stakeholders across the public and private sector was led by the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Patricia de Lille, and Head of Investment and Infrastructure Office in the Presidency, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

The revised plan focuses on partnerships between the public and private sectors for the delivery of sustainable, fit-for-purpose infrastructure.

SIDSSA projects, which will be gazetted after the symposium, have been selected from an initial 177 that underwent a rigorous due diligence process.

The Presidency said the priority projects in the immediate term are those that best support the aims of government, which include creating jobs, alleviating poverty, growing the economy and promoting a better quality life for all citizens.

The selection process culminated in a series of pitch sessions, which afforded project sponsors an audience with over 60 national and international funding institutions. These included multilateral development banks, development finance institutions, asset managers and commercial banks.

In addition to facilitating access to the funding that is needed to implement the projects, the SIDSSA process also seeks to overcome regulatory obstacles to infrastructure roll-out by developing a framework for fast-tracking approval processes and facilitating quicker executive decisions in the short- and medium-term, as well as influencing legislation to support developmental imperatives.

The speakers at SIDSSA are all subject knowledge experts and will provide valuable insights on how to implement the Infrastructure Investment Plan successfully.

All event updates can be found on www.sidssa.org.za.