The country’s leading body of construction contractors Master Builders South Africa (MBSA) has welcomed Minister Godongwana’s budget speech delivered on Wednesday 21 May 2025.
“We welcome the Minister’s budget particularly in relation to his commitment to infrastructure spending. Public infrastructure spending over three years will exceed the R1-trillion mark and that is good news for us as an industry that is adversely affected by low infrastructure investment particularly by the public sector, MBSA President Mr Sam Ngcongo said.
Ngcongo said that although MBSA is encouraged by these commitments to infrastructure investment, the state has always struggled to achieve its infrastructure development goals recent years.
“As a country, we must begin to approach these commitments in a certain way and not the way we have been doing in the past few years. We must increase state technical capacity to plan and implement the country’s infrastructure development projects. Supply chain management reforms must be expedited for quick and efficient procurement processes to ease the backlog. This should assist in the roll out of projects. It’s also important to consistently monitor our progress so to have the right interventions at the right time” Ngcongo added
Master Builders South Africa reiterate its position that it’s important for government to address all the inhibitors to implementation of infrastructure investment goals such as delays in approving building plans, inability to deal with illegal construction site disruptions, non-payment of contractors and the corruption just to mention a few.
“I would like to encourage all of us to commit to working together to ensure that infrastructure development aspirations of the country are achieved to create jobs and improve our economic growth. The time of pointing fingers has passed and our only option is to consolidate our efforts so we realise the common vision of building South Africa” concluded Ngcongo.
