Business gives Zuma three ideas on how best to target unemployment at jobs summit in Pretoria

PRETORIA -- President Jacob Zuma asked for suggestions on how best to create jobs and organised business promptly responded with a list of three ideas, at the start of a summit between the two sides in Pretoria today.

"As a government we have been working to strengthen the legislative and policy frameworks to make it easier to do business in our country, and also to support emerging business as well as broad-based black economic empowerment," Mr Zuma said in his opening address to the Presidential Business Summit on job creation. "We are keen to hear your suggestions on what else we can do."

The country needs to do something. With an official unemployment rate of 24% -- with much higher levels of joblessness among young people – SA cannot afford to ignore what has been described by some commentates as a ticking social time-bomb. Mr Zuma acknowledged the seriousness of the situation.

"Since 1994 we have made substantial progress in transforming the economy to benefit the majority, but serious challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality remain. We have had a long period of economic growth during the last 10 years, but it has not been strong on job creation. We need to find a solution."

Futhi Mtoba, the president of Business Unity SA, an umbrella body for organised business, responded by proposing the creation within the next three months of a body to look at three areas – that government pay its suppliers on time and reduce red tape hindering small business start-ups, that the private sector own and operate "some of" the infrastructure on which it depends to do business, while helping government implement its own large-scale infrastructure spending plans, as well as the creation of a joint council that would allow business and the president to meet on a scheduled basis.

"Targeted improvements in the attractiveness of our economy to investors, and an effective mechanism to ensure that we connect every policy, law, regulation and every government incentive to how it impacts jobs, would be the only appropriate legacy that this summit can leave," Ms Mtoba said.

Today’s one-day summit, called by Mr Zuma in February, will be crucial in setting the course of relationship between government and SA’s private sector. While Mr Zuma met with business interests last year, this is the first significant meeting between two sides that do not enjoy the level of trust seen in other emerging markets with higher growth rates.

It remains to be seen how far today’s meeting will go in bridging a gap between one side that sees government as a direct creator of jobs and another that wants the government simply to create conditions that will allow companies to invest, expand and create jobs as a result. The summit will finish later today, with the two sides expected to issue a joint statement.