The vice-president of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is not worried about the emerging black elite in South Africa, he said on Monday.
”You have a rich elite in every country. Let them get rich — as long as they reinvest in the country and show corporate responsibility,” Peter Woicke told journalists in Johannesburg on his last African tour before retiring.
Woicke — who is also managing director of the World Bank — dismissed concerns that black economic empowerment (BEE) in the country enriches only a few without addressing real poverty.
However, he said it is important for his organisation to support smaller black economic empowerment projects as well.
Admitting that he might be on the more radical side of the IFC’s policy spectrum, Woicke said he has no doubt of the necessity and value of BEE, or the IFC’s involvement.
Unlike its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the IFC not only supports BEE, but has been involved in various BEE deals in South Africa, including a $28-million (R167,7-million) investment in Mvelaphanda Resources.
Another BEE deal — with an IFC contribution of $30-million to $40-million (R179-million to R239-million) — should be announced by the end of the month, the organisation’s Africa department said.
In December, an IMF report suggested that government funding of BEE might be risky in the ”absence of safeguards against an undue concentration of assets”.
Woicke will be in South Africa for two days, before moving on to Mozambique. — Sapa