Hon Chairperson, the Special Economic Zones Bill has the potential to unlock real job creating growth in our economy. The SEZs can work to create jobs by attracting new investments in South Africa, but in order to do that, our SEZs need to be globally competitive. I argue that global competitiveness in the SEZ space requires three things: firstly, an attractive suite of incentives; secondly, simplicity of process; and lastly, seamless integration with the infrastructure.
This Bill does not deal directly with incentives save for providing an enabling environment for the government to design and offer a comprehensive set of incentives to potential investors. The entire SEZ project rises and falls on the attractiveness of incentives that government comes up with. Therefore, we will keenly watch those developments.
The incentives announced by the Minister of Finance earlier this year provide an excellent start, though it remains to be seen whether the Minister can get agreements on the actual implementation of that package. However, incentives alone will not be enough, because there will always be some other place or some other government that will try to top whatever we can realistically and sustainably offer. This brings me to the second critical ingredient, which is infrastructure.
The major test of this department, and indeed this legislation, will be whether the department can work with other departments and spheres of government to deliver special economic zones which offer easy access to efficient world class transport networks, energy networks and government services.
There must be process simplicity. A potential investor scanning the globe for the next place to locate his or her factory will not be willing to wait around while national, provincial and local governments lumber into action. Investors will simply move elsewhere. The process outlined in this Bill is cumbersome and relies on several ministerial decisions by both the Minister of Trade and Industry and the Minister of Finance.
In the portfolio committee, the DA pushed consistently for a much more simplified process for the application and designation of a special economic zone and the appointment of an operator. The department assured us that the process, from beginning to end, would not take longer than six months. That is on record and we will hold them to it.
Finally, the DA was successful in strengthening the role of local and provincial governments in designing and offering their own incentive packages, which we believe will be critical to the success of the SEZ project. Local governments in particular have an enormous scope to offer cost-saving incentives to investors, in rates, service charges and, particularly, electricity charges. We hope that local governments around the country will make good use of this opportunity.
Special economic zones can grow our economy and create jobs. However, in order to do so, the government will need to ensure that they are internationally competitive, that they get quickly and efficiently connected to reliable infrastructure networks and services and that the process to be followed is simple to understand and can be easily and quickly implemented. Thank you very much.