Small Enterprise Policy: Yet another Masterplan with another task team with more annual reviews

The Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams intends to gazette a Small Enterprise Development Masterplan as policy for small enterprise support.

This is yet another ANC Masterplan, which intends to form yet another task team, with yet more annual review processes.

The Small Enterprise Development Masterplan fails to identify any meaningful and practical interventions to assist SMMEs. Instead, it wants to formulate more guidelines, establish another task team between government and business and establish more annual reviews of laws for “priority reform”.

This reminds of the President’s SONA promise to form a red tape reduction unit under the leadership of Sipho Nkosi. 6 months later and no red-tape unit in sight, we can only speculate that Mr Nkosi’s red tape ghost squad is busy drafting more masterplans, identifying more task teams and creating more review processes.

The ANC is as always big on plans, and nowhere on execution. Historically these type of policies and masterplans introduced by the ANC have rendered the South African business environment hostile to investment, employment, and growth. Reforms to enable small-, medium and micro enterprise (SMME) growth through efficient governance have instead seen years of iterative draft masterplans going nowhere.

Instead of adding more layers of bureaucracy, the ANC-led government can simply do the following:

1. Stabilize the electricity supply, and specifically open the network for small business to help put power in back in the grid. Make small business part of the energy producing solution and include them in in Small Scale Embedded Generation (SSEG) opportunities;
2. Scrap all BEE legislation and requirements, it’s only big business that can afford to comply with this elite cadre enrichment scheme that is BEE;
3. Identify laws and regulations that prohibit bringing the informal economy into the formal economy, in particular compliance requirements that restrict access to formal finance solutions;
4. Overhaul and scrap rigid labour legislation, minimum wages and collective bargaining. The ANC should get out of the way of SMME’s to create jobs; and
5. Reduce the cost of petrol prices by implementing the DA’s Fuel Price Deregulation Bill, which has been submitted to Parliament. This could result in an immediate saving of R9 a litre, which would be a welcome reduction in significant spending across all business industries.

This is the difference between ANC and DA governments. In ANC governments cadres promise, plan, loot and review. The result is clear to see in failed audits, broken service delivery and rampant corruption, all contributing to more poverty, inequality and unemployment.

In stark contrast, in DA run governments throughout the Western Cape, DA public representatives identify, execute and bring real reform where we govern. The result is the clear blue DA difference of clean audits, improved service delivery and the lowest unemployment figures in the country.