South Africa secured a $1.5 billion (R25 billion) World Bank loan to help modernise the country\u2019s infrastructure and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the continent\u2019s largest economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The facility is the fourth in a series of stand-alone development policy loans to South Africa since 2022, aimed at easing infrastructure bottlenecks that have contributed to a decade of meagre economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Washington-based lender said that reform of the electricity and transport sectors, supported by the financing, could create almost 600,000 new jobs by 2032, including 280,000 next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe operation builds on reforms that are already showing results,\u201d the World Bank said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLoad shedding has been virtually eliminated for a year and a half, private investment in renewable energy has increased sixfold, and rail and port freight volumes have risen by more than 50% since 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scheduled power outages have become increasingly infrequent after years of being an almost daily occurrence, thanks to efforts to fix the state-owned power utility under a reform programme launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a reform tracker compiled by Business Leadership South Africa, a lobby group, almost 70% of the projects identified as priorities are either on schedule or completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis programme reflects our government\u2019s determination to remove the infrastructure constraints that have held back growth and job creation for too long,\u201d Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said in the statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWorking with the World Bank Group, we are deepening reforms already delivering results in energy and transport, while for the first time tackling the governance and investment gaps in our water sector that affect millions of households, particularly the poorest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa secured a $1.5 billion (R25 billion) World Bank loan to help modernise the country\u2019s infrastructure and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":817248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2079454080959660203","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866929,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866928\/revisions\/866929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}