The Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) recently hosted Eastern Cape public entities for purposes of enhancing collaboration in the delivery of socio-economic development projects in the province.
The meeting was expected to define the most optimum inter-agency collaboration model, and create a forum for the agencies to share their high impact priority programmes planned for the next 12 to 54 months.
In attendance at the meeting, on March 30, were Finance and Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism MEC, Mlungisi Mvoko, and chairpersons and chief executive officers of all the Eastern Cape development agencies, including the two Special Economic Zones.
The sitting of the meeting coincided with the Eastern Cape Economic Review Report for the Fourth Quarter of 2022, issued by Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council.
The report shows that the South African economy shrank by 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, with the Gross Domestic Product falling below pre-pandemic levels. During the same period, the Eastern Cape economy also declined by 1.3 percent with agriculture, finance, trade, manufacturing, energy, and government sectors on the main being responsible for the downturn.
Punctuating this otherwise bad news was a silver lining in job creation, with the economy having generated about 20 000 jobs resulting in the unemployment rate declining by 0.3 percent to 42.1 percent.
In his opening remarks at the session, MEC Mvoko affirmed that public entities need to strengthen their collaboration efforts as they are mandated to advance the socio-economic development imperatives of the province.
“The time to accelerate the Eastern Cape’s economic development is now, and there is no better way to kick-start the much-desired accelerated programme that aligns all the engines of the province’s economic growth to pull towards the same direction.
“This gathering becomes even more important given that the province has established the Eastern Cape Economic Development Fund, to be driven by the ECDC and with an injection of R100 million. The fund needs platforms such as these to ensure that priority economic development initiatives are identified to maximise what this fund can do.”
“I would like to single out one objective of the fund that aligns with today’s gathering being: the facilitation of co-operative partnerships with other government agencies in order to co-partner on high impact projects aligned with the fund’s mandate. This of course we do to catalyse and reinforce the commercial viability of both the public sector investments, as well as Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the province. This objective becomes key for me, if we are to achieve our economic development imperatives,” added MEC Mvoko.
In his collaboration call to other agencies, the ECDC board chairperson, Vuyani Jarana, asserted that considering the limited resources in the face of an enormous task of pushing back the frontiers of poverty and unemployment, there is a need for the key agencies to periodically meet, share scripts and push for greater alignment of programme execution to give a much greater impact on the economy.
“To explore the potential of a much more improved inter-agency collaboration, we have decided to host this meeting of chairpersons and CEOs of the lead agencies charged with advancing the Eastern Cape’s socio-economic development,” said Jarana.
Jarana further advised that the theme of this inaugural meeting is “collaboration and resource optimisation to advance Eastern Cape development”.
– ISSUED BY THE EASTERN CAPE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
