[panel panel-style="transparent" title="Sub-National%20Doing%20Business%20Support" link-text="Show%20All" title-size="18px" separator-color="primary-light" separator-size="1px"]The eight metropolitan municipalities participate in the Sub National Doing Business (SNDB) programme implemented through the Cities Support Programme within National Treasury (NT) in partnership with the World Bank and SECO. The SNDB programme is informed by the World Bank’s annual Doing Business (DB) survey and resultant DB index that provides a comparative measure of the “ease of doing business” across 190 countries. The DB survey draws on a set of indicators that focus on the impact of laws, regulations, and their enforcement on the ease of doing business for domestic firms in 10 areas over their life-cycle. Local government has a direct role in 3 of these 10 areas, namely Construction Permitting, Registering Property and Getting Electricity. The World Bank champions ease of doing business reforms based on best practices related to time, number of procedures, cost and quality measures.
South Africa has participated in the World Bank Doing Business survey since 2004, with Johannesburg measured as the proxy city for South Africa. In Doing Business 2020 (released 24 October 2019), South Africa ranks 84th out of 190 economies . Of critical concern is that over the last decade South Africa has declined 50 places, sliding from a rank of 32nd (out of 181 countries) in DB 2009 to its current rank of 84th in DB 20. The Sub National DB Survey is undertaken separately and collects comparable data across all the metros related to their specific performance areas. This allows metros to compare their performance against each other and against similar cities in comparable countries.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) and the NT initiated South Africa’s National Doing Business reform programme in 2017 as part of the overarching National Investment Climate Reform Programme (NICRP). South Africa’s stated Doing Business vision is: “To improve government business regulatory processes by optimising processes and using technology and digitisation to drive business process efficiencies, complemented by associated legislative reform.” President Ramaphosa has committed South Africa to be a global high performer and among the top 50 global economies by DB 2023 and for the DTIC (Invest SA), Presidency and NT to co-ordinate governments ease of doing business reform efforts. The national Doing Business reform progress to date includes establishing five (5) technical working groups (TWGs) in respect of Starting a Business, Registering Property, Dealing with Construction Permits, Paying Taxes, and Trading Across Borders. The SNDB programme is focused at improving the ease of DB environment at city-level through the adoption of more efficient city business processes and efficiencies and greater input by the metros into the broader national DB reform agenda.
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