SG: You're one of the companies that's been working with government, many companies working with government, but you're one of them, to deal with some of our logistics problems. We're on, I think, day 301 with no load shedding. Are you expecting more progress from that partnership to come? Some of these big problems that we're dealing with, that we've been dealing with for a little while, are you expecting some progress to come?
CM: I really am, Stephen. I think, you know, what's been highlighted has been how successful the collaboration between government, business, broader civil society, as well as the labour and trade union movement is concerned. It almost creates a different operating model for the country, that you can see all these sectors coming together potentially for the greater good.
If we look at the further challenges we have to tackle, you've got a water crisis that's looming, and our estimates are that we have to spend close to a hundred billion rand a year to over the next 10 years, to build the right infrastructure to make sure that we're maintaining infrastructure in the right way. That's a significant number.
Similarly, we have to look at how the transmission and distribution network for electricity has to come into the next level of efficiency to distribute from areas that previously would not necessarily have been grid power points – in other words, points that we would have plugged in from areas like the Northern Cape.
Historically, a lot of our grid and transmission distribution support network has been built in areas where our coal mines and coal-fired power stations are.
But when you're talking to renewable energies, and I'm using just the example of the Northern Cape, you've got to look at how do we build that grid support network.
Similarly, if I turn to ports and rail, all of this has to be done over the coming period of time and we look at those initiatives and say through those three or four key threads of infrastructure, and this is key economically productive infrastructure that we're talking about, infrastructure that leads to growth that leads to, in my view, inclusive growth, if we get it right, so ensuring that we're building broader employment, broader casting of the social net and more inclusion in the economy, which is ke, these economically productive assets do that.
The opportunity to leverage private capital, broader development finance capital, to work on public-private partnerships in this massive infrastructure build that would be required over the next five to 10 years.
And some of it's obviously very immediate. And we think that over the next two to three years, that number could be between 700 and 800 billion rand.
Cumesh, thank you very much indeed. Large numbers there. Cumesh Moodliar is the CEO at Investec SA. Cumesh, thank you, really appreciate that. Of course, from Davos with the World Economic Forum.