Attention broadcasters: English audio clip attached.
Tabled last week by Western Cape Minister of Finance Mireille Wenger, the results contained in the 2022 Municipal Economic Review Outlook (MERO) prove beyond any doubt that the Western Cape is fast becoming the preferred destination for manufacturing, financial, and agricultural businesses across South Africa. Amidst several sterling results, the 2022 MERO shows that the Western Cape has expanded its GDP – one of only three provinces to do so – and that its district municipalities have experienced a year of strong and consistent growth. This includes a GDP expansion of 6.2% in the West Coast District Municipality, and 5.3% in the Cape Winelands District Municipality.
These results have been achieved through a strong focus by the Western Cape Government on clean and responsible municipal government. Over the last year, the DA-run Western Cape achieved great success in the fields of municipal audits, poverty and unemployment eradication, and clean, corruption free governance. By ensuring service delivery and financial health in the province’s municipalities, the Department of Local Government has in turn ensured the necessary conditions for growth in the Western Cape.
The Western Cape Government has also doubled down on the infrastructure necessary for growth, with significant investments made into ensuring the security of municipal water supplies, with R67 million spent on this since 2018. Through innovative techniques and intelligent investments the City of Cape Town is also able to offer businesses a vastly higher degree of energy security than the remainder of the country. With a guaranteed water supply and a vastly better energy outlook, it is little wonder that both businesses and ordinary people are fleeing from corrupt, ANC-led municipalities to the greener pastures of DA-led regions. If this trend continues, it will not be long until the economic centre of the country moves from Gauteng to the Western Cape.
MPP Derrick America says: “As the Western Cape’s ruling party, our opposition has criticised us for drawing attention to key indicators such as audit outcomes while supposedly failing to clarify the impact that these results will have in the lives of those we represent. These results do this in the clearest possible terms: good governance results in economic growth, which in turn results in more jobs, enhanced safety, and a higher standard of wellbeing for the people of the Western Cape. The continuing economic growth in the Western Cape brings with it jobs, prosperity and wellbeing for our citizens, and ensures that the Western Cape remains on a positive trajectory toward a better future, and provides yet another example of the DA’s proven ability to guarantee growth where it governs. I congratulate the municipalities of the Western Cape on their continued economic growth, and I look forward to seeing these results replicated on a national scale in 2024.”