Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) has released a statement indicating that the organization is encouraged by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s opinion piece which appeared in the Sunday Times entitled: “How SA can beat global financial turmoil.”

In the article, Gordhan outlined that there needs to be an improvement in the quality of spending including a new infrastructure planning process in provinces and action needs to be taken against provinces and municipalities with poor internal systems.

He adds that this will realise substantial savings; reduce policy uncertainty and ensure that the domestic policies are clear and consistent with that of the vision of the National Development Plan (NDP), so that the country can attract investment in the economy.

According to the statement released on 12 June 2013, CESA is pleased that Government is talking about creating skills and capacity, as well as an atmosphere of policy certainty.

“As in the past, our members are ready to support Government with project delivery. Our target is to recreate the informed client, especially at municipal level. This will not only benefit us, but more importantly the client entity in the public sector,” avers CESA CEO Graham Pirie.

CESA represents the interests of its members and provides quality assurance for clients. Over 500 firms employing just over 22 000 staff, who collectively earn a total fee income of almost R19billion a year, are members of CESA

He states that CESA member firms are definitely ready to consult and support Government in finding innovative and entrepreneurial ways of partnering in order to ensure a successful roll-out of the infrastructure plan.

Pirie notes that it is refreshing that Gordhan refers to the NDP as a “plan for South Africa’s future.”

“We need more champions of the NDP from Government, so that there is a more objective buy in for the plan. We have backlogs in terms of delivering basic amenities to the people, which will improve their quality of life and the NDP provides solutions to these service delivery challenges.