House Chair and hon members, the UDM supports the Amendment Bill.
We support the extension of the mandate of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, DBSA, to provide infrastructure development finance to key infrastructure sectors such as the water, sanitation, energy, transport, education, health and information and communication technology, ICT, sectors beyond the borders of the SADC region, that is, to the rest of the African continent.
This, in our view, will go a long way toward enhancing trade, economic growth, regional integration and development in Africa. We, however, feel that there are several areas of concern to consider.
Firstly, there have been many instances in the past where the work of the Industrial Development Corporation, IDC and the Land Bank clashed with the mandate of the DBSA.
As already indicated earlier, there is the potential that its work could also clash with the mandate and work of the African Bank. This, therefore, requires that we put more effort into refocusing the mandate of all these institutions in order to ensure value for money and to prevent wastage of government resources that results from the duplication of work.
Secondly, the last chunk of DBSA's disbursements goes to municipalities. It therefore follows that while it is prudent not to amend the Act in order to allow the representation of local government or other interest groups, as the committee aptly puts it, we cannot emphasise enough the importance of DBSA forging close relationships with municipalities, as they are its biggest clients.
Thirdly, we welcome the increase in authorised share capital. We, however, hope that by failing to identify certain areas of focus on the continent, we are not spreading ourselves too thinly; because, by biting off more than we can chew, we run the risk of the DBSA not being effective in its infrastructure development programmes, or even worse, finding itself encountering financial difficulties in future.
Ngamafutshane, Mphathiswa, uyayibona ngakumbi into yokungquzulana ngokubhekiselele kumagunya, ufumanise ukuba angquzulana oku kweenkunzi zeegusha zisilwa ngonobenani. (Translation of isiXhosa paragraph follows.)
[In short, Minister, you can see the conflict in relation to mandates, with mandates butting heads like rams fighting over nothing.]
It is something that needs to be addressed because it creates unnecessary tensions ...
... kwindlela ekufanele ukuba afezekiswe ngayo amagunya ... [... in the way mandates should be carried out ...]
... and mandates in particular ... ... zesebe ngalinye. Siyabulela. [... of each department. Thank you very much.]