Hon Chair, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister, hon members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of ground has been covered by previous speakers, so I will only focus on infrastructure. The modern economy strives on infrastructure; in other words, the cornerstone of any economy is its infrastructure. By infrastructure I am confining myself to rail, roads, sea ports, airports, dams, electricity and power stations.
From the beginning of 1994 up to the current international recession, we were told by economists that South Africa has done very well in the economy. In fact, they called it a phenomenal growth in the economy. They said that apartheid did not grow the economy as much as the new ANC-led government has done. [Applause.]
We grew the economy up to 4,5%. There were challenges and a part of those challenges was that the economy was not creating as many jobs as it was supposed to. We had an economic policy called the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition, Jipsa, and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, Asgisa. Asgisa said that in order to grow the economy further than what we have done - further than this phenomenal growth that outshines apartheid - we needed to beef up our infrastructure. They said that the economy has grown so much that the infrastructure can't cope any more.
The infrastructure has become small, because the economy itself has grown. We need to beef up and increase our infrastructure. If you go on the highway you will see congestion there, but you will also see that we are already increasing the infrastructure, because where there were three lanes there are now four lanes. That shows that we are increasing the capacity of our roads to accommodate our traffic.
Another good example of this infrastructure that is so important for the economy to grow is that of electricity and power stations. Just to give you an idea, agriculture consumes 12% of electricity in South Africa; residents in South Africa consume 15% of electricity; mining consumes 17% of electricity; and manufacturing alone consumes 37%, as small as it is. You will realise that a lot of our raw materials from mining are still sent overseas in that we still export a lot of raw material. At Limpopo there was a resolution stating that we would like to beneficiate and expand manufacturing.
The Minister of Trade and Industry has said that in order to change the structure of this economy that exports raw material, we need to focus on manufacturing, but the very important point there is that we cannot expand our manufacturing. As small as it is, it is already consuming the highest supply of electricity, which is 37%. So in order to increase our manufacturing, we will have to increase electrical supply.
We know that our government is already busy with the building of power stations to boost the electrical infrastructural facilities for manufacturing. We hope that when manufacturing increases in our economy and when all the raw materials - our platinum, chrome, diamonds, which are beneficiated overseas; as much as 90% of small and rough diamonds are beneficiated in India - are beneficiated, all that must happen here, because big diamonds are beneficiated in London, Belgium and Israel.
We want to do all that here in South Africa, but besides the skills, for example in engineering, that we need to start designing our companies, we are also going to need a highly increased level of supply of electricity, because without electricity manufacturing can never manifest.
Now this just goes to show how important infrastructure is to our economy. Public Works has been given that responsibility. The 500 jobs that we are going to create are short term, but long-term and permanent jobs will be created when our economy expands. In fact, Asgisa has said that we need to increase the growth of our economy beyond. Once manufacturing has taken effect, we will definitely go beyond 6%.
We would like all of you to support us by supporting this budget for infrastructure, because no economy can ever strive without infrastructural basis. The foundation of any economy is the infrastructure. [Applause.]
Fortunately, 2010 has also assisted us in beefing up our economy, as we can see that our airports and sea ports are being developed further and even our roads, because there was a budget allocated to infrastructural development for the purposes of the 2010 World Cup. It looks like good things are happening in South Africa in different ways. We can only wish that Bafana wins, because South Africa is actually winning.
In conclusion, with regard to the assets registration, the Minister and Deputy Minister have covered the asset registration issue, which is important. We need to know what belongs to government and what assets are of what value as far as land is concerned and which farms belong to the government, because there are people occupying those farms. If you didn't know, you would be under the impression that they belong to Mr so and so, only to find out that those farms are government's property. There are also properties internationally and in embassies.
With regard to the asset registration, I would like to focus on the area of rights. We have mineral rights and we are prospecting to know exactly where minerals are. Geoscience is doing the research, but the private sector, as it was involved in mining, already know where minerals are because they have done prospecting.
Together we can do better and we hope they will reveal the information so that we can have asset registration as far as minerals are concerned. I support the budget. Thank you. [Applause.]