R83bn West Coast boom
Billions of rands are set to be pumped into the West Coast’s Saldanha Bay over the next 20 years, radically changing it into an industrial powerhouse and creating thousands of jobs. Five major projects are on the cards for the town. They include developing the port economy, increasing its bulk export capacity, building a renewable energy plant, exploiting its oil and gas potential and a massive housing project.
The investment, mostly foreign, will be to the tune of a whopping R83 billion over 20 years and creating close to 40 000 jobs.
Saldanha Bay has the deepest and largest natural harbour in the southern hemisphere, making it ideal for industrial development. Feasibility studies are being done and this will be followed by environmental impact assessments.
If all goes according to plan, construction of the various projects should start in the middle of next year, or towards the end of the year. The projects involve major foreign investors and major oil and ship building companies. A renewable energy plant independent of Eskom will supply affordable electricity that is essential to industrial growth.Please see the attached Cape Argus article for the various projects.
Weekend Argus - 24 July 2010
Saldanha Bay Municipality Most Productive Municipality in SA
The Municipal IQ is a unique web-based data and intelligence service specialising in the monitoring and assessment of all of South Africa’s 283 municipalities.
Municipal IQ measures the performance of SA’s municipalities on a range of critical socio-economic and financial issues that reflect the reality of local government circumstances and risk on the ground. Further, Municipal IQ actively compares, contrasts and ranks municipalities, one against the other.
Saldanha Bay scored 95.9 percent for actual service delivery. Saldanha Bay was also three of the top-scoring local municipalities for
water provision. Saldanha Bay was in the national top five for sanitation.