Hill-Lewis: Transnet excluding Cape Town Harbour from private sector investment is inexplicable
Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said he believed there’s an 'ideological obsession' behind excluding the city's port from private investment and upgrade plans.
The Port of Cape Town. Picture: Ntuthuzelo Nene/EWN
CAPE TOWN - Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that excluding Cape Town Harbour from private sector investment was inexplicable.
The port is currently ranked by the World Bank as the worst-performing in the world.
Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday, Hill-Lewis said he believed there’s an "ideological obsession" behind excluding the city's port from private investment and upgrade plans.
Transnet CEO Michelle Phillips has earmarked the ports in Durban, Richards Bay and Ngqura as those for which urgent private sector investment would be invited.
She's been quoted in the Business Day as saying Cape Town is not part of this plan.
Hill-Lewis said that while he’s supportive of the work Phillips was doing to get Transnet back on track, he believes there's a deliberate bias against the city.
"When you think of 11 million unemployed people, and the scale of the poverty in our country, to not institute or pursue that reform because of some kind of ideological obsession that you have, is unforgivable."
He said that improving performance at the Cape Town Harbour would give the agriculture sector a boost, and could increase economic growth by one percentage point.
"We will step up our advocacy for this critical reform, which would single-handedly add billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the Cape economy."
Hill-Lewis said that he would use any leverage he had to push this matter to the top of the GNU's agenda.