Hon Chairperson, Minister and Deputy Minister, comrades, hon members and guests, good evening. I rise on behalf of the ANC in support of Budget Vote 11. In his state of the nation address in February, President Zuma announced the continuation of the ANC-led government's commitment towards ensuring government's role in the critical development and maintenance of key economic infrastructure, assuming an active responsibility for the future well-being of the country.
Amongst others the market demand strategy of Transnet and the Eskom programme through state-owned enterprises, SOEs, are a further acknowledgement of the ANC's recognition of the positive developmental potential SOEs can hold as a primary vehicle for public sector infrastructure. Regarding the task of government and its responsibility of nation-building, of dealing with rapid economic growth, dealing with debts, dealing with deficits, dealing with poverty and unemployment, a new role has been forged now for SOEs - one that requires innovation and change, one that has rarely occurred in the past.
Chairperson and hon members, studies in the 70s and the 90s by Haggarty and Shirley, some of which the World Bank also, by the way, published, asserted that SOEs did not meaningfully contribute then to the economic development in low and middle income countries.
International experience has shown that the distribution of infrastructure is not neutral. The developmental state is now rectifying as it should in dealing with inequality in the provision of social and economic infrastructure. In fact, what we saw in the 70s and the 80s, according to a report of the Reserve Bank, were serious declines in infrastructure investments, as opposed to now, since 2002, when 72% of investments through the ANC-led government's commitments have been brought through in terms of roads and power amongst many others - even the purchase of new aircraft by