Investing in local jobs and industries

Local Economic Development (LED) is one of the primary building blocks in terms of the economic growth and development equation for the Province. The primary challenges LED has the potential to address include the following: Job creation, the building of an enabling environment that will encourage economic engagement by a larger number of local entrepreneurs, drawing together a number of critical partners and mobilising their energies and resources towards local economic growth and development, facilitating access to finance, markets, capacity building and business support services, creating the environment which will effect economic viability of local communities and their Local Authorities, linking local product development to provincial, national and international markets. There are many other fundamental challenges. The key issue though is whether people in their communities, especially rural and peripheral environments, are benefiting in real terms regarding the quality of their lives. The LED programme will also give effect to the “Growth, Employment and Redistribution: A Macro Economic Strategy” framework that outlines the strategy for rebuilding and restructuring the South African economy. The document confirms Government’s commitment: “It is Government’s conviction that we have to mobilise all our energy in a new burst of economic activity. This will need to break current constraints and catapult the economy to higher levels of growth, development and employment needed to provide a better life for all South Africans.” (1996:2