Jobs fund has little to show for R9bn budget

Neither the private sector nor government is creating enough jobs to stem growing unemployment.

As the Treasury yesterday briefed parliament about the progress of the R9-billion jobs fund, and hinted at longer time frames for some of its programmes, data from Statistics SA showed that as many as 4.7million people are unemployed.

Unemployment rose by more than expected, to 25.6%, in the past quarter, from 25.2%, according to the quarterly labour force survey, the results of which Statistics SA released yesterday.

Unemployment in South Africa is the highest among 45 emerging-market nations tracked by business news agency Bloomberg.

Though 100000 jobs were created, it was not enough to absorb the 222000 people who entered the labour force in the past three months.

The jobs fund, which is run by the Treasury in collaboration with the Development Bank of Southern Africa, was announced by President Jacob Zuma in his 2011 State of the Nation speech.

As much as R9-billion was set aside to fund innovative public-private partnership projects that showed the potential to create jobs within 36 months.

The Treasury's Najwa Adries, who heads the programme, told MPs that the investment committee of the jobs fund has so far approved the allocation of R3.4-billion to 66 job creation projects across the country.

She cited the Akwandze small-scale sugar farming scheme in Mpumalanga as one of the most successful projects.

The Akwandze project created 544 jobs after receiving a R50-million grant and the turnover of the small-scale farmers has increased by R150-million a year.

The fund is intended to create 92717 permanent jobs in the next eight years.

But, said Adries, it was impossible to create sustainable jobs in less than three years because "projects take almost up to a year to get themselves settled, established and all that".

Adries said that the life span of the jobs fund, which was five years, might have to be extended by three years because of "teething problems".

"The reality is that our original estimates [will] have to be adjusted. Perhaps we were too optimistic.

"It is our estimate that it would be more feasible to allocate the budget over eight years instead of the original five," she said.