South Africa’s economic recovery plan and the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) documents set out the path to sustainably emerge from the economic crisis facing the country, indicated business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso.

“On the one hand, the economy needs to be put back on a growth path. On the other, public debt must be brought under control and the State’s finances stabilised.

“These are, in effect, business plans for the country. Like any business plan, though, what matters is the execution,” she emphasised in her weekly newsletter on November 2.

Mavuso said that, for the country deliver on the plans it has made, a culture of accountability needs to take hold.

“We need passionate and committed public servants with the resources and strategies to deliver. We need a performance culture in which success is recognised and rewarded and failure is managed explicitly. In short, we cannot behave like business as usual,” she stressed.

Mavuso said that, with every missed deadline, her faith that the country was working towards that was weakened.

She mentioned the latest being the shift in deadline for the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, an energy tender that is meant to be urgently attracting new generation to relieve the country’s electricity shortages.

Last week, the deadline for bids was delayed by a month to December 22.

Mavuso indicated that this meant that the start of operation of these additional contributions was also affected.

Moreover, this comes after the delay last month of the digital spectrum auction by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, which will now only take place in March next year, after being promised this year.

She mentioned another example as the National Energy Regulator of South Africa last week announcing that it would now accept applications by companies who want to generate their own electricity above 1 MW, without the applications having to comply with the Integrated Resource Plan 2019.

Mavuso said the problem was that this decision was made by the Mineral Resources and Energy Minister in February, and that it should not have taken eight months to implement a relatively simple procedure.

“I don’t want to pick on just these examples unfairly. There is a widespread culture of missing deadlines that needs to be confronted,” she emphasised.

She cited statistics shared with the organisation about the level of government tenders that subsequently get cancelled. From January to September 2018, 17 599 tenders were published but only 5 255 were awarded. Of the rest, 1 326 were cancelled and 10 132 were simply not awarded.

“Every tender requires considerable effort from bidders. When a tender is not awarded, delayed or cancelled, that effort is wasted. The failure rate is inexcusable. A failed tender means someone has not researched and understood what the market is able to provide before issuing it.

“If there is insufficient budget to cover the cost of the lowest priced bid, then the tender is wasting everyone’s time. With each failed tender, businesses lose confidence that it is worth putting a proposal together and must factor the costs of wasting time on bids into the prices they offer.

“Most importantly though, delays and failed tenders mean the business plan is not being implemented. If we are to turn this culture around, there needs to be accountability. Our economic recovery plan and public budget will not be delivered if we do not do that. The mechanisms like the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency need to drive this from the centre. It is the only way we can have faith that our plans are capable of delivery,” said Mavuso.

She mentioned that the MTBPS carried far more significance, owing to the crisis facing the country.

“With government borrowings projected at R2.1-billion a day, the rapidly opened hippo’s jaws – the gap between government spending and government revenue – will close slower than projected in the emergency budget. We must be completely resolute in managing that debt and structural reforms are needed to do that. Business is willing and able to work with the state to deliver an enabling environment,” Mavuso noted.

In terms of public sector wages, which are now the subject of a court decision, following government reneging on a three-year agreement on wage increases, Mavuso posited that perhaps this could have been avoided through better consultation among the key stakeholders in the South African economy.