Gauteng is gearing up to fast-track its ambitions of becoming a preferred investment destination, as it opens its doors for private-sector participation and collaboration for critical projects to meet the province’s vision for the Gauteng city region over the next 15 years.

South Africa’s most populous province was seeking to engage the private sector and government to “get closer to one another” and attract local and international investment for key infrastructure developments, said Gauteng Economic Development, Environment, Agriculture and Rural Development MEC Lebogang Maile.

He was speaking to Engineering News Online ahead of this week’s inaugural Gauteng Infrastructure Investment Conference, where the provincial government would unpack a number of significant infrastructure projects and expose potential investors to investment opportunities in the areas of information and communication technology and broadband deployment; energy; new human settlements and post-apartheid cities; inner-city regeneration; public transport; and water and sanitation.

The conference, to be held in Midrand, aimed to build and strengthen partnerships and collaboration efforts between government and the private sector to “open the door” and mobilise the resources required to identify gaps and opportunities to transform, modernise and reindustrialise the region’s economy.

This followed the launch, earlier this month, of the Gauteng Business Consultative Forum – a platform for regular, more formal and structured collaboration on revamping the province that contributes 34.7% to the country’s gross domestic product.

The forum was expected to improve coordination in the economy and promote investment, enterprise development, capital allocation and policy advocacy.

This formed part of Gauteng’s transformation, modernisation and reindustrialisation programme anchored on radical and decisive economic, social and spatial transformation; the transformation of the State and governance; modernisation of the public service, economy, human settlements and urban development and public transport infrastructure; the reindustrialisation of Gauteng; and “taking a lead” in Africa’s industrial revolution.

In this year’s departmental budget, Maile pointed out that the province would move to attract investment in sectors that contributed to the development of the region, with R1-billion in new foreign and domestic investments eyed for 11 priority sectors.

Meanwhile, Gauteng’s political leaders were working on initiatives to mitigate the shortage of industrial land and office space for conducting business and restrictive regulation and compliance frameworks.

One such initiative was the revamp of the environmental authorisations process in Gauteng to mitigate delays in getting environmental authorisations for developments, which had emerged as one of the biggest hurdles to a smooth business environment.

A new automated environmental-impact assessment (EIA) system would allow prospective investors to submit their applications with supporting documents online and reduce the turnaround time for EIA approvals from an average of 18 months to 90 days.