By Nangamso Mabindla
17 February 2005

ECONOMIC decline will have to be halted if Buffalo City wants to deliver services successfully to its residents.

Quinton Williams, the City's IDP, Budget Integration and Performance Management general manager, touched on this and other key issues at the Objectives of IDP, Budget and PMS Representation Forum at the Regent Hotel in East London on Thursday, February 17.

A draft review of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and Budget for 2005/06 and 2007/08 was presented at the forum. The IDP identified many challenges the City would have to deal with to be successful, including unemployment, poverty and economic decline.

It found that 70 percent of Buffalo City's households had an income of less than R1 500 a month, with 28 percent having no income at all. "But what is of greater concern is that these nil-income households have more than doubled since Census 1996, when the percentage was 14 percent," said Williams

This growing poverty is confirmed by the increase in the unemployment rate - 53 percent in 2001 compared with 39 percent in 1996. This means that the number of employed people has dropped from 160 000 to slightly more than 139 000.

"The ward survey undertaken in the second half of 2004 confirms [these figures]. The vast majority of wards indicated that unemployment and job creation were critical issues for their wards," said Williams.

Rising unemployment was a result of slow - and possibly declining - economic growth. Between 1996 and 2002 the average annual Gross Value Add was 0,3 percent, while the specific Gross Value Add for 2001/01 was well below that, at minus 1 percent.

For the City to meet President Thabo Mbeki's target of cutting unemployment by half by 2014, it needed to create more than 7 000 jobs a year.

"To address these issues it is vital to develop and implement an economic and a long-term City strategy. But we cannot do this alone; we will need to work with all spheres of government and all role players in the City," said Williams.