Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela launched the multi-billion-rand Provincial Growth and Development Plan (PGDP) that she said would "serve as our blueprint for growth and development over the next 10 years".

Sketching the background to the PGDP, the Premier said it was aimed at turning around a situation of uneven development in the province in which the four district municipalities of OR Tambo, Alfred Nzo, Chris Hani and Ukhahlamba together contributed less than 80 per cent of secondary output, yet were home to 70 per cent of the population.

Balindlela noted, these district municipalities had "significant potential for growth of resource-based industries such as agro-processing, forestry and tourism but remain under-developed.

"Instead, public services and informal trade remain the dominant economic sectors in these regions, neither of which provides the basis for sustain and job-creating growth.

"The fact that large numbers of our provincial population are not participating in wealth creating entrepreneurial activity is economically costly and compromises the revenue base of many of our rural-located municipalities. This in turn increases dependency on state-sponsored safety nets and limits the resources we have available for infrastructure and economic development."

Balindlela said the PGDP was designed to introduce a number of "innovative measures that transfer skills and productive assets to the poor in order to facilitate their participation in the economy".

She said partnerships would be the "key" to the success of the PGDP and this would require new forms of cooperation between the three spheres of government; partnerships with the private sector, and a "more proactive stance in influencing the investment decisions of our public entities".

The Premier said the strategic framework of the PGDP set "bold targets" including:
• An economic growth rate of 5-8 per cent a year;
• An 80 per cent reduction in the number of households living below the poverty line by 2014;
• Food self-sufficiency across the Eastern Cape by 2014 with special focus on the OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo district municipalities;
• Clean water for all by 2008; and
• The elimination of sanitation backlogs by 2010.

She said the strategic framework advocated interventions in six specific focus areas: agrarian transformation and food security; poverty eradication; manufacturing diversification and tourism; public sector transformation; infrastructure development and human resource development. These areas had been translated from strategy into flagship programmes.

The PGDP document can be found at www.ecpgdp.co.za.