President Cyril Ramaphosa hosts the South Africa-Kenya Business Forum. (2)
My dear brother President Ruto, earlier this year in March we held the South Africa Investment Conference and we've been having these for a number of years now. And we always put a target for the 5-year term of our government to say by this 5-year term we want to have raised so much money. In the last term we had put a target of 1.3 trillion rand, 1.5 trillion rand rather. And we invite businesses to come forward to respond to the quest that we should create a conducive environment for investments to take place. And we invite them to come forward to come and tell us what they are going to do and what investments they are going to put on the ground. They often come and make commitments. And in the first term it was way over 1.5 trillion. This year we started again after a lull and they committed 890 billion rand. And having seen the enthusiasm that they displayed, I raised the target to 3 trillion rand. I felt that we should be able to reach 3 trillion rand. Are they trying to close my voice down because I'm talking about money? >> [laughter] >> So we get the businesses to come forward and make their commitments and tell us in what area they are going to invest, how much they are going to invest, and if they are reinvesting in their businesses, they may come and make commitments. What I do believe we should now do at the next business council that will take place in Nairobi is to tell ourselves that we are now full of speeches. We are tired of hearing speeches. We now want to hear businesses coming to the stage and telling us in what areas they are going to invest and what amount of money they are going to put on the ground in both countries, Kenya and South Africa. In that way colleagues, we are then going to be more practical. We are going to go beyond the speeches that we make. And on our side so that you must never think that we are not going to do anything on our side we will come forward and tell you in chapter and verse the steps that we are going to take and or will have taken to improve the regulatory environment to deal with the tariffs issue to also deal with ensuring that there's manufacturing climate in our own countries and to ensure that the various institutions that need to take decisions like in our case, I take in South Africa as we heard earlier do take decisions. We will come forward and put very practical solutions. And therefore President Ruto and I are not out of turn in saying we want you to come and present your actual investment commitments and tell us the time frame during which those investments will take place. President Ruto outlined a number of projects that Kenya wants to embark upon. I don't want to extend the time of our meeting by outlining the number of projects that we in South Africa want to embark on.