The year of the great unblocking to ease investment

In the year ahead, we all — in the public and private sectors — need to ask one question: are we each ensuring that everything is being done to facilitate growth, investment and job creation? This is especially true after a challenging 2025, which highlighted the need for a diversification of trade and investment relationships in a more complex world.

In his new year’s address, President Cyril Ramaphosa recognised the progress being made by his administration to advance structural reforms, but acknowledged that “much more still needs to be done”. Indeed, with fixed capital formation having stalled at about 13.7% of GDP (Q3 2025), the burning platform to do things differently and better is obvious. We need roughly R500bn more in annual investment to reach 20% of GDP on this measure — a challenging but achievable target.

This administration has been focusing on getting the basics right — in particular, the Operation Vulindlela reform process led by my colleague Rudi Dicks. It has become widely recognised by local and foreign investors for its focus on infrastructure (electricity and logistics in particular) and visas, among other things, and for fostering productive business collaboration.

As much as OV is about the domestic economy, my assignment is to remove impediments to cross-border trade and investment, ensuring there is a single point at the apex of government focused on unlocking and accelerating that activity. This means not only attracting new trade and investment opportunities, but also ensuring that existing ones remain in play in a competitive, changing world.

Over the past eight months in this role, I have maintained a full agenda supporting the president and ministers, travelling to both established and emerging priority markets. We have met with companies, public servants and politicians in foreign governments where we are seeking to expand trade.

We have found a hugely receptive audience, a network of policymakers we need to engage with more effectively, and a great deal of enthusiasm for our country. This has included many companies all over the US. There is a strong pipeline of interest and goodwill (helped by our hosting of the G20 and B20 in 2025) that we can capitalise on in the year ahead.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has led these efforts as our “super-salesman”, with roadshows more than doubling in frequency over the past eight months compared to the prior two years combined, alongside busier schedules packed with economic-focused meetings. He has met with a record number of global corporate leaders on his travels in nine different capitals in this period.

These engagements have produced a substantial and practical “to-do” list, which is now our urgent task for 2026. While media debates have fixated on empowerment as the singular issue blocking investment — the reality, stepping back from a few high-profile cases, is far more prosaic, and, dare I say, “dull”.

Everywhere we have travelled, people have said that the issue isn’t bureaucracy itself. There is good bureaucracy that is nimble and responsive, and bad bureaucracy that becomes stuck. Too often, here, the complexity of investment and trade-related regulation or processes leads to unnecessary delays — whether because decisions are slow, processes stall, or rules require additional care in drafting to avoid unintended consequences.

As such, a lot of our work in the year ahead will focus on unblocking issues — following up on water licences, mining rights and environmental permissions where they become stuck, confirming there are time frames set in complex processes as with the Competition Commission or assessing incentives, ensuring dispute processes with state entities are fairly progressed to conclusion and working with line departments to resolve issues of regulatory and policy uncertainty.

We are starting work on building nimbleness and accountability in government. We will increasingly utilise tracking and case management to ensure there is support for investors. We will also swiftly study how technology can be brought to bear on regulatory and licensing processes that too often are paper-based.

There are easy wins for the taking. OV and home affairs are leading the way in showing how to utilise technology.

This is not to say that the empowerment question will not be raised by many investors — this administration is working through the issue with the trade, industry & competition minister, announcing reviews of the relevant regulatory frameworks to ensure they operate more effectively, while broader sector-specific discussions are continuing in the appropriate forums.

None of this implies that, as a government, we cannot have our own strong views on how our economy works — ensuring it works in our interest and leaves a fair share of the benefits here. Indeed, all the investors we meet globally understand that there is a social licence to operate in any foreign country and that in South Africa, with its particular history, this is especially important.

Our mission for 2026 is to identify and prioritise low-hanging fruit — actions that can make investment and trade easier while respecting our sovereignty.

A significant step-up in responsiveness and support — listening and acting when it comes to blockages — forms the core message the South African delegation will take to Davos in the week ahead: to hear from investors what needs fixing and to provide other credible reassurances that action will follow. While we have news of positive developments to share, such as improvements in our credit rating and South Africa’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force greylist, investors are primarily focused on the practical issues that affect them directly, and that is where we need to engage. This is particularly true of existing investors, where we must look at the policy landscape and complex trade-offs to sustain jobs in our country — particularly in the automotive, ferro-chrome and steel sectors.

Collaborative conversations at Davos and throughout 2026 are critical in a more uncertain world where we must work harder to partner and attract every rand of both existing and new foreign direct investment, while diversifying trade with a broader range of countries and companies.

Removing barriers to trade and investment, together with advancing domestic reforms, is ultimately the only way to lay the groundwork for sustained higher growth and faster job creation.

Dr Alistair Ruiters is Special Adviser: Investment Promotion to President Cyril Ramaphosa