By Clive Ndou

The Western Cape provincial government aims to stimulate economic growth and provide jobs to the unemployed youth, Africans and women in the province through a multimillion-rand transport infrastructure development programme

Lynne Brown, the provincial government’s minister of finance and tourism, said expenditure on transport over the next year would hover around R728 million.

Presenting the provincial government’s medium-term budget this week, Brown said the bulk of this money would be spent on roads, which would create immediate jobs for the unemployed.

“We know unemployment is an unrelenting and urgent issue in the province.

“The prevalence of high rates of unemployment among Africans, women and the youth tells us clearly that we are dealing with a structural issue that runs deep,” she said.

Brown said tackling the issue of unemployment through spending on transport and public works projects was one way of ensuring accelerated and shared growth.

The Western Cape’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is forecasted at an average of 4.2% this current financial year, while the national average over the same period is 4.1%.

But Brown said it was “not enough” to focus on aggregate growth figures.

“Equity also matters in the pursuit of growth and development. If we are to achieve accelerated and shared growth, the government must forcefully get to grips with these structural causes of unemployment and undertake interventions which start to seriously tackle a problem of this magnitude,” she said.

Brown said the pursuit of shared growth required government to understand the relationships between social capital, skills and education development, better health and infrastructure development.

Source: BuaNews