South Africa is open for business and hopes to attract billions of rands worth of investment during the second annual South Africa Investment Conference (SAIC).
Speaking ahead of the upcoming second conference, minister of Trade & Industry Ebrahim Patel said that over the past year, the government has made steady progress on making it easier to do business in South Africa through InvestSA by focusing on factors which contribute to the country’s improved competitiveness.
“According to the 2019 World Economic Forum Global Competitive Index, released last week, South Africa ranks number 1 out of 141 nations in budget transparency, which is an illustration of the robust and transparent political governance system of the country,” he said.
“South Africa’s macro-economic environment has proven resilient as have its institutions of governance, which continue to advance the interests of good governance and democracy.”
According to the WEF, ‘budget transparency’ assesses the amount and timeliness of budget information that governments make publicly available.
The group assigns countries a transparency score on a 100-point scale using a subset of questions that assess the amount and timeliness of budget information that governments make publicly available in eight key budget documents in accordance with international good practice standards.