February 2010

Cape Town - Around R52 billion will be made available in the next three years to roll out various Expanded Public Works projects over the next three years.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, tabling his Budget Speech today, said an additional R2.5 billion will be used to support labour intensive projects in the social, non-governmental and environmental sectors, largely targeted at rural areas.

The second phase of the EPWP aims at creating 4.5 million short-term job opportunities. The programme created 1.6 million short-term jobs during its first phase from 2004 to 2009, exceeding its target of one million. A projected 642 000 job opportunities will be created in 2010/11, rising to 1.2 million in 2012/13.

"Public sector investment is a crucial component of development as it provides the infrastructure through which we transport goods, power the economy and connect households and business to services and markets," said Gordhan.

Over the next three years, the public sector aims to spend R846 billion on its infrastructure programme with a significant portion of the work to be undertaken by state-owned entities.

Cape Town - Government is looking at ways to boost employment creation and economic growth as South Africa emerges from the global economic recession, says Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

"The recent crisis and its aftermath have led to a serious introspection and rethinking of what were thought to be robust and superior economic models," Gordhan said, delivering his maiden Budget Speech in Parliament on Wednesday.

He said all South Africans shared a commitment to expand job creation and grow the economy.

Chief among these are a need to reduce joblessness among youth, support labour-intensive industries through industrial policy interventions, improve the performance of the state and ensure that the country maintained a competitive exchange rate and low inflation rate.

Other interventions that the government would look at in supporting growth and employment were skills development, public employment programmes, rural development, improving the savings level and ensuring a more inclusive labour market, he said.

Cape Town - Further talks with the parties involved will need to take place before a decision can be made on the change of the capital city's name to Tshwane, says President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma was responding to Deputy Minister of Agriculture and leader of the Freedom Front Plus, Dr Pieter Mulder's speech during the Parliamentary debate on the State of the Nation Address (SONA) in which he raised the issue of geographic name changes and specifically Pretoria.

The change of Pretoria to Tshwane has been a longstanding and thorny issue.

Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana retracted the registration of the Tshwane municipal council name as a geographical feature earlier this month due to technical issues. Ministry officials have since been instructed to carry out more work on the matter.

Describing the issue of what names one should use to describe the towns, cities, streets and geographical features of the country as "difficult", Zuma said he had met with Dr Mulder to discuss the matter.