New Age - 21 April 2011

Response to Stephen Timms research on small enterprise development in South Africa, Brazil and India.

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25 Degrees in Africa Volume 6, Number 2 - 2 May 2011

Camco, an international company specialising in climate change solutions, and Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), an independent economic policy research institution, recently released a case study entitled “The Construction Industry's Path towards a Low Carbon Trajectory” with funding from the British High Commission. According to the case study, the South African construction industry has been increasingly focused on both the introduction of green practices and on energy-saving technologies.

Globally, the building sector is said to contribute more than one-third of the total energy usage and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in society. Major South African construction companies, such as Group Five and Murray & Roberts, are starting to pursue green practices and projects. This has, in some cases, involved voluntary compliance with the Green Building Council of South Africa's (GBCSA) Green Star South Africa Office rating tool and the implementation of energy-efficiency and demand side management measures.

Recent media reports have also indicated that some construction companies (including Group Five and Aveng) are moving quite discernibly into renewable energy (RE) developments in the hope that they can secure a share of the renewables allocation under the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for electricity. In this regard, Group Five has set up a specific new unit which deals with RE projects and Aveng has recently appointed an environmental manager for the group. Aveng is particularly positioning itself around wind and solar energy for bids that will emerge in this sector in the near future. Murray & Roberts have also adopted a new environment-friendly asphalt technology (Much Asphalt) that saves energy.

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Financial Mail - 17 February 2011

The R9bn jobs fund announced by President Jacob Zuma in his state of the nation address last week will invite competitive bids from projects with innovative ideas on how jobs can be created.

The fund will be run by national treasury, which proposed the idea to the cabinet lekgotla last month. It will operate on the basis of a competitive process, allocating funds to projects that show promise rather than on the usual budgeting principle of carving up funds among government departments.

It will look for innovation and ideas, say treasury officials, and will be open to experimenting with different approaches to find out what works. It will also look for co-funding from municipalities, donors and business.

With R9bn to give away over the next three years — R2bn in the first year — the challenge will be to get going quickly. What kind of projects are likely to secure support?

With the nation's attention focused on the problem of youth unemployment — more than 50% of people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed — the idea of a wage subsidy for first-time workers, mooted by finance minister Pravin Gordhan a year ago, has been gaining currency in the ruling party. The fund could provide the opportunity for the subsidy idea, which was vehemently opposed by Cosatu, to be tested.

However, only one study on whether a wage subsidy would encourage employers to hire young workers has been initiated in SA. Though not a project of national treasury, the study by the African microe conomic research umbrella in the department of economics at Wits University is being keenly watched. First results are expected by mid year.

Proven examples of successful job creation schemes are more likely to get immediate attention. A prime example would be projects modelled along the lines of the community works project (CWP), a cost-effective form of government's expanded public works programme (EPWP) that over the past two years has been quietly piloted and has grown from 28000 participants in 2009 to more than 80000 in 2010.

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Business Day - 31 January 2011

WITH the African National Congress's announcement this month that job creation will be its main focus this year, the government could do well to boost support to small businesses. In this, India and Brazil hold some promising lessons.

Small businesses are key as they create by far the most jobs the world over. In SA between 1985 and 2005, 90% of all new jobs were created by small, micro and medium companies, according to the Finscope Small Business Survey Report of 2006.

In Brazil, the labour minister's General Register of Employed and Unemployed for last year revealed that between 1995 and 2000, 96% of new jobs were created by enterprises with fewer than 100 employees.

According to Finmark Trust's Finscope 2010 survey, small businesses could create 2,5-million jobs in SA by 2020. Added to this, Finmark believes the government could take about 500000 people off social grant schemes if it supported small businesses more actively.

However, numerous factors, such as a lack of business and financial management skills, make it difficult for small enterprises in SA to expand or for entrepreneurs to start up.

So what can India and Brazil teach us? Some might say Brazil and India's larger populations and land areas make it difficult to draw much in the way of lessons from them, but SA does share some similarities.

All three are grappling with similar development issues, such as a lack of quality education, a shortage of quality infrastructure and a low share of international trade, while Brazil, like SA, is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Despite these similarities, Brazil is ranked as the sixth most entrepreneurial country in the world, while SA is ranked a lowly 35th out of 54 countries, according to the 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Gem) Report. India was ranked 15th out of 43 countries when it last took part in the Gem Report, in 2008.

In general, small-business policies and schemes appear to be working best in Brazil and less successfully in India and SA, according to my assessment in a report for local economic think-tank Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (Tips).

In SA and India, policies have done little to create effective support agencies to help business owners start up and grow their businesses. And awareness of many government support schemes remains low.

In SA, much of this is as a result of the government's lack of co-ordinated strategies aimed at small business as well as a government support architecture that is clumsy and confusing to business owners and public servants alike.

The government has too many agencies aimed at assisting business owners, which are spread across two different departments — confusing government officials.

Much of Brazil's lending to small businesses is channelled through its development bank, BNDES, allowing the state to play a strategic role in funding small businesses. In this way, the South African government's various funds for businesses might be more strategically deployed if they were all housed under a single body, such as the Industrial Development Corporation.

 

- Timm is a small-business journalist. He is the author of the TIPS report, How South Africa Can Boost Support to Small Businesses: Lessons from Brazil and India.

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Engineering News - 25 January 2011

As increasing environmental pressures take hold in South Africa, the country's major construction companies showed that they were starting to focus on pursuing green practices and projects, particularly in renewable energy projects where opportunities were emerging.

For Group Five in particular, a view has developed that climate change opportunities exceed risks, and the company sought to develop capabilities around greener practices and technologies on a wide scale across its business units.

“Group Five and other construction groups, such as Murray & Roberts see it as critical for the group to have the ability to offer low carbon solutions as required by clients,” said climate change consultancy Camco in its recently released case study called 'The Construction Industry's Path towards a Low Carbon Trajectory'.

The research was conducted by Camco and the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategy institution, with funding from the British High Commission, for the 'Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities for the South African Economy' project.

The study highlighted that South Africa's construction sector has a key role to play directly and indirectly in moving the process of greenhouse gas emissions reduction forward.

It also suggested that a sectoral climate change development plan could assist the construction industry in taking its green practices forward, although this would require interactive discussions between government and construction industry players as well as a transformation of mind-sets within the sector.

A number of trends were evident in the construction sector, which were signalling changes in construction practices, an increased focus on the environment and, the introduction of greener practices and technologies.

It was also noted that there was clarity required from the South African authorities in terms of environmental priorities, as these influenced the type of interventions, investment and training in which construction firms needed to engage.

Another trend in the construction sector was that firms were engaging with products or strategies focusing on reducing energy consumption.

“Of note in terms of progress is that large firms are influencing the practices of suppliers. There is thus the opportunity for a more extensive process of energy efficient and environmentally-friendly products emerging within South Africa beyond construction firms – in manufacturing and through to service providers,” said the report.

The case study highlighted that greater efforts were required from authorities on South Africa's objectives around various environmental commitments – at an international level, national level, and locally at municipal level.

Municipal governments were said to have a crucial role to play in the implementation of climate change mitigation policies, as well as the monitoring and evaluation thereof.

Cities were responsible for 80% of all carbon dioxide emissions and 60% of all freshwater consumption in South Africa. “However, for local governments to have authority to enforce policies, it requires clarity on the structure thereof – which is communicated to them from a national government level,” the report stated.

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You can now apply for an Exploratory Research Grant under a new CEPR – DFID research initiative on private enterprise development in low-income countries. Over the next five years, Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) will pursue a research agenda that aims to better understand what determines the strength…

About the Presenter: Mmatlou Kalaba a research fellow at TIPS, specialising in trade research. He also carries out TIPS' capacity-building initiatives in the Southern African region, providing training courses on applied analytical and methodological tools. He currently holds a position in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of…

The Community Work Programme (CWP) was implemented as a pilot programme in Bushbuckridge and several other municipalities in 2009. The programme is essentially an employment safety net employing 2 200 people in Bushbuckridge within four sectors of community work, these being food security, palliative care, community infrastructure refurbishment and teacher…

Joint report from Industrial Development Corporation, Development Bank of Southern Africa and TIPS In its recent green economy study, UNEP9 concluded that environmental sustainability and economic progress are not opposing forces and that significant benefits will flow from the greening of the world's economies. Greening generates increases in wealth, measured…

Gaylor Montmasson-Clair is a Senior Economist at Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS). He leads TIPS's work on sustainability and just transition. He is the Facilitator for the South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM), the industrialisation plan for South Africa’s renewable energy value chain. Gaylor is also a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development (CCRED). He holds two Master’s degrees, respectively in International Affairs from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) of Grenoble, France, and in Energy and Environment Economics from the Grenoble Faculty of Economics, France. Gaylor has been working on…

The need to address sustained economic growth while simultaneously preserving the natural environment presents important policy challenges for countries such as South Africa. Growing concerns about climate change, a loss of biodiversity, and the poor management of natural resources such as forests and water all indicate that the benefits of…

Hamid Rashid is Senior Adviser for Macroeconomic Policy in Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the United Nations. He leads a new UN initiative to provide alternative and credible policy advice to the Member States on fiscal, monetary and exchange rate related issues. The macroeconomic policy advice of…

Emigration of highly skilled people has become an increasing concern in South Africa. While it is uncontested that such emigration can have detrimental effects in the form of a brain drain, this policy brief argues that South Africa could also draw some benefits from this emigration. It recommends that the…

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the main indicator used to measure economic activity. However, GDP is not designed to assess the welfare of a nation. This policy brief recommends the construction of a tailor-made sustainability indicator for South Africa, based on the Adjusted Net Savings methodology that would track the…

Wouter Schalken is a Namibian based researcher specialized in a number of areas around strategic tourism planning, analysis and development. Wouter has worked for a number of development agencies (such as the UNDP, SIDA, USAID, the GTZ, the World Bank and UNESCO amongst others) at project-specific, national and regional levels.…

Dr. Robert Kirk is Senior Vice President at AECOM International Development and was until recently the Chief of Party at the Southern African Trade Hub. Robert, who is an expert in the area of trade policy analysis, has extensive experience in regional trade policy. He was formerly a policy advisor…

Mail & Guardian - 2 March 2012

A mineral being discarded as "waste" may well be able to provide South Africa's -- and the world's -- energy needs for the next thousand years or more. Thorium, aptly named after the Norse god of thunder, Thor, is a nuclear fuel that is four times more abundant in the Earth's crust than uranium. It was the topic of a conference in Cape Town last week, organised by the South African Institute for Mining and Metallurgy.

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The deadline for submission of paper outlines is 25 April 2012. Successful authors will be notified by 30 April 2012 and will receive a £4,000 (Four thousand UK pounds sterling) commissioning fee, which will be paid upon submission of the finalised paper on 1 June 2012.

Geographical Indications are goods that derive the uniqueness of their quality from the region where they originate. Provision for protection of such goods is provided for in the TRIPS Agreement among WTO member countries. This policy brief looks at some international examples where goods have been protected based on a…

Call for Papers The organizing committee invites abstract submission (Max 300 words) from researchers and practitioners in the field of international trade, finance and investment. All abstracts should be formatted to facilitate the review process. Author's names and details, including names of all co-authors plus affiliations and addresses for general…