The City of Johannesburg has finally wrapped up its three-day and two-city investor roadshow with a loud and clear message that it’s ready to roll out the red carpet for investors.
With a valuation roll of over a R1 trillion and leading rating agency Moody’s confirming the City has a strong revenue growth supported by a broad tax base, strong liquidity level and large and diversified economic base among others, investors heard on Wednesday, 28 February 2018, that Johannesburg has a good story to tell.
“We are open for business and want to do business with you,” said Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Finance Councillor Funzela Ngobeni to investors, financial institutions and funders in Sandton after concluding the Cape Town leg a few days earlier.
The event was attended by the captains of the financial industry, rating agencies and financial institutions like Moody’s, AFD (French Development Agency), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, Investec and developers.
“We are South Africa’s biggest and most regionally dominant city in terms of population, size and reach of the economy. Indeed, we’re a dynamic, diversified city economy and finance and logistics hub in the region’s economic heartland,” said MMC Ngobeni.
City Manager Dr Ndivhoniswani Lukhwareni echoed the MMC Ngobeni’s sentiments.
“We are extremely positive that by the end of our term we would have achieved the 5% economic growth we have set ourselves to achieve.
“Developers are extremely interested to invest in the inner city. Not only did we get the interest from Johannesburg investors, but even many big national developers are interested to invest in the inner city,” said Dr Lukhwareni.
During the roadshows, Dr Lukhwareni said many investors expressed concerns about safety issues and filth in the inner city. But he said the City had demonstrated that those were the two issues the administration was paying attention to and they were being addressed.
MMC Ngobeni said the City recently recruited 1 500 JMPD trainee officers as part of the Joburg’s strategy to make the inner city safe. “Most of the new JMPD recruits will soon patrol the streets and enforce by-laws, which would ensure that the inner city is safe.”
MMC Ngobeni told investors about the launch of the Inner City Revitalisation Programme, which is aimed at rehabilitating bad buildings through the release to the private sector for conversion into low-cost housing and SMME opportunities, the launch of A Re Sebetseng – a city-wide volunteer campaign to clean up the City; and the Revenue Enhancements Programme that will see the City improve its revenue collection rates.
He said the City wanted to ensure that residents experienced good service delivery. “The anti-corruption message and theme has been constant, so has the message on ethical, clean and professional civil service. We’ve done this by introducing Operation Buya Mthetho because we are serious about bringing back the law to Johannesburg,” said MMC Ngobeni.
Tshepo Ntsimane from DBSA said it was committed to supporting the City’s projects especially the greening projects.
