Cape Town - Big business had encouraged the government to go ahead and implement its new economic strategy and to "be as bold as possible", Dave Brink of Murray and Roberts said yesterday.
He was speaking at a media briefing in parliament after President Thabo Mbeki, his deputy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and the cabinet had briefed the Big Business Working Group on its accelerated and shared growth initiative.
Included in the business group were Johan Rupert of Remgro, Saki Macozoma of Standard Bank, Jim Sutcliffe of Gold Fields, Vincent Maphai of BHP Billiton, Patrice Motsepe of African Rainbow Minerals, Maria Ramos of Transnet and Paul Kruger of Sasol.
Brink said the government had already made a presentation to the international advisers that it had met with a fortnight ago, who had received it enthusiastically.
"Both of those bodies have commented that in welcoming the process, all we could do really was to encourage the government to go ahead with it, implement it and be as bold as possible."
Mlambo-Ngcuka said seven growth areas had been identified and of these the government had managed to unpack the details of two, namely infrastructure and human resources development.
The government was trying to remove those binding constraints to growth, especially shared growth, in the area of infrastructure, which had been restricting the movement of goods and services, and capacity in general for the country to take advantage of macroeconomic stability.
The government was also looking at bottlenecks to further growth in the tourism sector. Another area receiving attention was business process outsourcing, where training was not complicated. This sector would help to absorb younger people even if there were aspects that were not sustainable.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said the cost of telephony was a hindrance to this sector and limiting it only to call centres did not take full advantage of the full spectrum of opportunities.
Asked how the government intended to deal with the high cost of telephony, public enterprises minister Alec Erwin said the Convergence Bill would take that further, as would the second network operator and unbundling the so-called last mile.
It was agreed that South Africa needed to tighten up on human resource development, which had emerged as a major threat to the economic growth initiative.
Macozoma said a gap had been identified in the skilling area, particularly in further education and training. In discussions with education minister Naledi Pandor a few weeks ago, business had identified the recapitalisation of education and training colleges as an area where clear legislation was needed.
The government had put in the money while business would make sure its facilities and staff were available to ensure that the right curricula were being taught and the right experience imparted to people.