The South African government has unveiled a pipeline of 55 new catalytic infrastructure projects from various sectors valued at about R595 billion, that will create an estimated 538 500 employment opportunities.
However, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia de Lille said on Thursday there is a funding gap of about R441 billion for the 55 new projects being presented to the market.
Head of Infrastructure and Investment in the Presidency Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said 60% of the 55 projects are at an advanced stage of preparation and only 40% at early preparation stage, which means many can be rapidly graduated to support President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan.
‘Big pool of global liquidity’
Ramokgopa added that if these projects are properly packaged, there is a big pool of global liquidity that can be directed towards supporting some of the infrastructure project programmes that the government is initiating in the second instalment of sustainable infrastructure developments.
He said in addition to improving the quality of projects coming through, they are also attending to some other issues, including bulk infrastructure financing.
Ramokgopa said when these initial projects were unveiled that funding from the debt capital market accounted for R340 billion of the total investment in these projects and they would not draw any money from the fiscus.-moneyweb
