The reason for that, Chairperson, is that everything I said last year is still applicable right now - nothing has changed. No, correction, hon Minister, something has changed. Things have gotten worse.
In his 2013 state of the nation address, President Jacob Zuma pronounced that, to prepare for the advanced economy we needed to develop, we would expand the broadband network. According to the National Development Plan, broadband has a significant role to play across the African society. I cannot overemphasise this enough, and my speech today is focused on this. If I could have gotten a show of hands from the gallery about whether they would want to hear about all the negatives of last year, I would have asked them, but I know that they are not supposed to participate in a debate.
It is well documented that flourishing entrepreneurial cultures can play a leading role in creating jobs and oiling the wheels of the economy through the creation of continual economic and social innovations. Booming entrepreneurship in emerging markets such as Brazil, Turkey, China and Thailand has provided a key stimulus to the rapid increase in material living standards across these nations in recent decades. In comparison, South Africa has a low rate of entrepreneurial activity for an emerging economy.
Although much emphasis has been placed on the need to rectify issues, like the punitive regulatory burden and lack of financial capital, limited attention has been paid to the role technological inefficiencies play in stifling entrepreneurship. These inefficiencies are primarily the result of a monopolistic telecommunications sector which has been ineffectually regulated. Consequences of such systematic inefficiencies include exorbitant telecommunications costs, frustratingly slow download speeds and generalised poor service, which reduce the overall use of Internet services.
Data from Net Index, an independent Internet monitoring service, currently ranks South Africa 124th out of 182 countries for overall Internet download speeds, with a speed of 3,82 megabites per second. This compares unfavourably to other emerging markets such as Brazil with 7,20 megabites per second, Turkey with 7,9, China with 10,1 and Thailand's 11,59 megabits per second. Even countries with far lower rates of economic development experience greater download speeds, such as Rwanda with 5,2, and Ethiopia with 5,42 megabites per second. Additionally, data on the costs of Internet services is equally discouraging, with South Africa failing fundamentally in the provision of globally competitive prices.
These increased prices and slower download speeds, caused by a lack of competition, elevate costs for businesses, which subsequently reduce their overall profitability, small businesses being particularly vulnerable to such costs. In an increasingly technologically dependent world, the ability to effectively conduct business and communicate online is an imperative for the success and growth of many businesses. This is truer still for small businesses - try to operate a small business, and you will find out. This facilitates a substantial balancing of the corporate playing field, allowing small businesses to compete with much larger organisations in ways inconceivable in decades gone by.
Current initiatives to promote increased entrepreneurship through skills development programmes and increased access to financial capital, although welcome, are likely to prove insubstantial unless equal efforts are made to improve the overall efficiency of the national telecommunications framework. The livelihood of the majority of the poor people in South Africa depend on micro and small-scale enterprises.
Regular and easy access to the Internet is an increasingly important tool to assist students to seek information and learn to write and do research. An analysis of findings from the 2011 Census found disturbing evidence that the overwhelming majority of black African students are highly disadvantaged in this regard. Without access to the Internet, students will have fewer knowledge resources at their disposal and will be less experienced in how to deal with an oversupply of information. They will also be underprepared for making the move from the education system to the workplace.
The current broadband announcement, to achieve 100% broadband Internet penetration by 2020, in my opinion will be too little, too late. The success of this distant target, however, is dependent on both the public and private sectors, with the state-owned enterprises, SOEs, within the department playing a significant role. Unfortunately, they still appear to be lurching from one crisis to another. We are all aware, and it has been mentioned by the Minister and others, that state-owned enterprises are the delivery arms of government. Therefore, stabilising SOE boards and monitoring them and their compliance are crucial to ensure that they deliver on their mandates.
Minister Pule, you know as well as I that not much has changed over the past 12 months to make the SOEs efficient, and I want to tell you today that your goal should not be about achieving clean audits and greater alignment of strategic objectives. It should, and must be, about delivering those services that they are responsible for efficiently to the communities of our country. I thank you.