Youth skill development will have to be prioritised if SA’s investment drive is to bear real fruit.

This is according to heads of business taking part in the fourth annual SA Investment Conference currently underway in Johannesburg, where the government is aiming to attract R1.2-trillion in investments by next year in a bid to boost infrastructure, energy and manufacturing projects as part of job creation and ensuring economic growth.

Opening the conference of 1,000 delegates, including investors, President Cyril Ramaphosa said SA had raised over two-thirds of reaching the five-year target, a total of R774bn in investment commitments, despite the pandemic by the time the country held its virtual conference last year.

“Of the R774bn committed, around R316bn has so far been invested. Of the 152 investment pledges, 45 projects have been completed. A further 57 are under construction. Fifteen have been put on hold, in several cases due to the impact of the pandemic,” he said.

Ramaphosa said his administration had established the Infrastructure Fund with R100bn to be allocated from the fiscus over 10 years as part of leveraging blended financing from private investors and multilateral development banks for infrastructure.

“We have prepared a pipeline of projects in water, sanitation, energy, transport, digital infrastructure, and agriculture, agro-processing and human settlements. Construction on a number of these catalytic projects will commence this year,” Ramaphosa said.

He said this would help the objectives of the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP) of driving growth and job creation in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Naspers SA CEO Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa said the country was not doing enough to meet the demands of digital skilling despite having a youthful population which was critical for the new economy.

“Right now we still continue to be a net importer of skilling, but we have the capability of becoming a net importer of those skills,” Mahanyane-Dabengwa said.

Anglo-American CEO Mark Cutifani warned that there was no value in being destructive on the part of business, which he said had to constructively work with the government on its stated objective on key development challenges.

“We don’t have a land problem. We have a development problem, which is an opportunity. So investment in energy, water, transport, education, health and services is where we can make a difference,” said Cutifani.

Discovery Ltd CEO Adrian Gore slammed what he called a negative narrative of SA’s business environment which he said was resilient and capable of ensuring both returns and contributions to the economy despite existing challenges which he said were not unique to the country’s economy.

“The narrative is much worse than reality. If you are an astute investor, this is where you can make super returns if you do that properly. The narrative here is negative continuously yet the country is more resilient than people think,” he said.

Trade and industry minister Ebrahim Patel said while the country had suffered economically due to the Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years, recorded growth in export was signalling that the country was on its way to recovery.

“Last year, off the back of the commodity boom, SA achieved a record performance, exporting R1.8-trillion, representing almost 1/3 of our GDP,” he said.

Investors are expected to make new investment commitments for the year on Thursday.