/ 21 May 2015

The power to develop

Senzo Mchunu, Premier of KZN, gives his opinion on the way forward for the province

‘KwaZulu-Natal is almost as natural as nature. Here it is quieter, slower and warmer. Here, democracy lives side-by-side with traditional leadership.

This province has immense potential when it comes to economic development; in terms of contribution to the GDP, we are now ranked number two.

One development that facilitated this growth was the establishment of the international airport. With direct flights the number of visitors to the province has increased, and in the next five years the airport will be surrounded by different economic activities.

The port of Durban has become a trade port, and we just launched the Dube Tradeport as the new Industrial Development Zone (IDZ), one of two in the province. Almost R1-billion has been invested in the trade port; it is going to be one of the biggest in Africa.

There is a lot of activity regarding the coal that moves through Richards Bay, the home of the send IDZ in the Province. The recently signed agreement with Transnet to upgrade the railway lines is in line with the presidential strategy for infrastructure. We also want to move fast on the rail between Johannesburg and Durban and develop our own trains between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

The sugar cane industry is expanding our economic growth; KwaZulu-Natal can really add more value by diversifying the industry in areas such as biofuels and other renewable energy technologies. In this province we want to focus on creating employment by growing our economy in the fields of tourism, freight and logistics, manufacturing agriculture and mining.

We are also expanding agriculture, for economic development and food security. We want to fight poverty by producing food and training people.

The Phakisa project or study of the ocean or “Blue Economy” shows that we need to focus on gas and oil industries and that there is huge potential for aquaculture, manufacturing and transport along our 3 000km of coastline.

In the next three years we want to change the face of Durban completely, and attract some of the big corporates that migrated to Cape Town. In the next two weeks we will host meetings to propose infrastructure projects for Durban to increase its competitiveness. We are also looking forward to the final adjudication of our bid to host the 2022 Common Wealth Games in Durban and we will pull out all the stops to make another 2010 World Cup success out of this event.”