GOLD Fields CEO, Nick Holland, said the South African government had recognised the need for economic reform.
In an interview with Business Day, Holland also put his weight behind the policy reforms proposed by Business Leadership’s B4SA group, saying they were “important”.
“It’s about creating the right regulatory environment to make us more investor-friendly, it’s about a social compact between business, labour and government. It’s about infrastructure projects being put in place because that’s a constraint,” Holland told the paper.
“It’s critical we put our country in a better position. We’ve got to get behind this, and business leadership, the Minerals Council SA, Business Unity SA and so on to drive this because if we don’t, it’s not going to happen,” he said.
“The government realises that in the post-Covid era we’ve got even more work to do. We had a lot to do before Covid.
“If no-one saw this as urgent before, they must sure as hell see it as urgent now. I think our president is keen to drive this, so everyone sees the need … I think it will happen,” he said. “It might take longer than we like, but it will happen,” he said.
“We’ll get there, but it’s taking too long. We need to try to do things a little quicker.”
Business was resilient and would find a way to keep going, he said. “It will be easier if we get the government and organised labour behind us. “Organised labour is seeing things are becoming really tough, and we’re seeing a small shift change from organised labour in the right direction.”
