By Speaking to The Business Weekly, the Executive Mayor of Mangaung Metro in the Free State Cllr Gregory Nthatisi said the City is looking into hosting an economic investment summit where they can attract investment into the metro.
Nthatisi says there are many attractive investment opportunities in the City, however, the tariffs are too high and are discouraging to investors. The Executive Mayor said they will have to come up with a way to over the tariff challenge.
The provincial government hosted an investment conference in Bloemfontein in February this year, where business raised concerns about doing business in Mangaung Metro; they mentioned the issue of rezoning property, that it takes ages for the property they bought to be rezoned and that discourages them, coupled with that are the high tariffs.
“We are now also coming up with our economic investment summit where we are going to invite all the people of Mangaung to also give us direction as to how best we can invest and invite investors in Mangaung. One of the problems we are faced with, is that our tariffs are pretty high to actually impress upon the investors to come in the City,” said Gregory Nthatisi.
The Executive Mayor said the metro is currently consulting with stakeholders, business and other stakeholders to advice the municipality on how best to work towards reducing the tariffs to be attractive to investors.
“Through the district development model, we are also inviting other stakeholders from the province and national to look at how best the people of Mangaung could be helped. We have quit a number of attractive areas of investment that would require that the money must come to the province to create job opportunities, localising our interests and making sure that we also tag with the resources that we have locally,” said Executive Mayor Cllr Gregory Nthatisi.
