Letter to Business Day - Minister needs to break from past

My letter to Business Day is the lead letter in today's edition.

Dear Sir

Leon Louw (Preference for small business not productive) makes suggestions for how the Department of Small Business Development can avoid being “potentially superfluous”. The DA broadly agrees with his suggestions. 

Minister Zulu has a choice: she can restrict her mandate to the narrow bounds of what is possible to achieve in her department, or she can go beyond that and become the government’s first business-friendly minister and advocate among her cabinet colleagues for the liberalisation of the economy. While the first is not easy, the second is nigh impossible unless she has the support of the President and Deputy President, and an unflagging commitment to the overall strategy embedded in the National Development Plan.


The Treasury’s presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Small Business Development this week was startling in its candour and illustrates Zulu’s dilemma. Policy decisions on small business, it said, depend on government choosing between two mutually incompatible visions – job creation for millions of unemployed people, or transforming the economy through the creation of decent (read high paying) jobs. Under the first regimen reduced red tape, relaxed labour laws, breaking up tenders into smaller chunks and getting government off the backs of business is what is needed. Under the second we can see more regulation under the watchful (and job-destructive) eye of the Departments of Economic Development and Trade & Industry.

The DA is pushing for root and branch reform requiring the Minster to adopt the broad mandate approach. She needs to assert her independence, make a bold statement of her intention to make a break with the past, and begin systematically implementing the NDP’s strategy for small business development.

Yours

Toby Chance MP

Democratic Alliance

Shadow Minister for Small Business Development