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Now is not the time to give up on SA, Anglo American CEO

Source: News24, 14/04/2023


• Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad says that while SA is not the country it was in 2018, it is still offers value to investors.
• But business needs to help and fix it right now.
• Top of the agenda are the energy crisis, the logistics crisis and crime and corruption.
SA is still investible, and while times are tough, this is not the time to give up, Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad said on the eve of President Cyril Ramaphosa`s fifth investment conference.
The SA Investment Conference will hear investment pledges by local and international firms towards a new investment target, which will be announced on Thursday. But the fifth conference will also see the government attempting to reassure investors that it will address the energy and logistics crises, which have choked economic growth.
SA`s economy is hardly expected to grow this year, with the IMF forecasting 0.1% growth and Treasury on the optimistic end of the scale, forecasting 0.9%.
Wanblad, who has been CEO for a year and has spent his entire career with the company, says that SA remains a vital part of Anglo American`s business, contributing half of its earnings last year and being home to 30% of its assets.
Fixing `ravaged` SA
But he is frank that SA today is a different place to the country it was in 2018, when business and investors were hopeful that a new dawn was imminent as Ramaphosa took office. At the time of the first investment conference, Anglo American committed R85 billion and followed this with another R15 billion two years later and another R10 billion a year after that.
Says Wanblad:
Now we are saying, what do we do? South Africa`s in quite a different place now. It`s been ravaged by the pandemic, and it`s got a whole lot of logistical and infrastructure issues that, unless dealt with, are going to be a material impediment to growth and investment. So, it`s a really an opportune time to stand back and think, well, what does it take for SA to truly become investible again?
While there is much to be done to fix the country, for Wanblad three priorities stand out: the energy supply; logistics; and; crime and corruption. Following the establishment of the National Energy Crisis Committee, he and other business leaders have appealed to Ramaphosa to give them a seat at the table on the crisis in logistics, particularly fixing rail through a partnership approach.
He`s enormously optimistic about progress made in the past few weeks and Ramaphosa`s direct interest and involvement. In recent weeks, Ramaphosa has met Transnet management and directors, business, and labour and is gearing up to announce a joint crisis initiative at the conference.
It is not about doing government`s work for it, but helping government to do its work, he says.
`This is being done in clear recognition of what we want to achieve here. In the first instance, it is stability. The system is in decline and it is going to continue to decline unless we arrest that. Then the second thing is to grow it back to where it was. The third thing is to grow it from there, because when you grow it from there, you enable true economic growth within the country.`
`Prioritise like hell`
Fixing these three priorities won`t fix the whole country, he acknowledges, and it is easier to assist in energy and logistics where business has expertise and resources than it is in restoring rule of law. He hopes, though, that efforts to help reinforce the prosecuting arm of the state can make some contribution.
`It is very difficult to move forward unless you are very clear on what you`re trying to achieve. So, we are trying to think about how we come up with some tangible, deliverable, focused outcomes. That is what I think we need to be talking about in this phase of SA`s drive for investment,` he says.
It is the same approach he takes to running the business, now among the biggest mining companies in the world.
`We prioritise like hell. And it doesn`t mean some things are not important. It`s all important. But actually, you want to do the most important things first.`
But unlike potential investors who haven’t yet sunk money in the ground, Anglo American has been mining in SA for more than a 100 years and so, might have an interest in talking up SA. He says:
Yes, of course, we have got money in the ground. And we`re not drawing stumps on this at all at this point in time because SA is not a lost cause. I mean, if it was, we would say it`s uninvestable and we can`t do anything about it, so no more money can go in. But we don`t, we don`t believe that. But of course, the rate at which money can go in will be materially limited by SA`s ability to absorb that type of investment in the first instance and then secondly, to deliver the returns for that investment that are going to be required.
Wanblad says he is not alone is seeing the opportunity that lies in SA.
`Many of the people that I speak to feel the same way. Most of the people that I`m working with on this feel like South Africa is still full of opportunities. It is definitely not the place to give up on now, no matter how hard it is, no matter how difficult.
`I have to say, that the level of frustration is extremely high, and the narrative is very negative. But we don`t get to fix the narrative by just telling a good story. We have to make a good story.`
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