Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) has welcomed government’s increased focus on infrastructure development in support of economic recovery and job creation.

This comes after Finance Minister Tito Mboweni confirmed this while tabling his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) in Parliament on Wednesday.

Commenting on the announcement by the minister Chris Campbell, CESA CEO notes: “We are pleased that Government has announced its intention to partner with the private sector to increase investment in public infrastructure with the establishment of an infrastructure fund and we are confident that this will provide a clear signal to investors that could kickstart economic growth if managed correctly.”

Although the organisation welcomes these positive steps by Government it cautions that there are still many challenges to confront.

“As stated by Minister Mboweni the quality of public expenditure is often poor and governance problems are often severe, particularly in provincial and local government, and state-owned companies. Government needs to put strong measures in place to tackle these problems,” Campbell notes.

CESA also notes that it is concerned about the impact on job creation based on the revised GDP growth forecast for 2018 down from 1.5% in February to 0.7% with inflation expected to remain within the 3-6% target band over the medium term.

“CESA welcomes the strengthening of infrastructure planning and the plan to address shortcomings in public administration and finances and is in support of the work of commissions investigating corruption and governance failures at several institutions, along with ongoing management training, financial strengthening and organizational renewal across the public sector.”