Tshwane economic development agency (Teda) – a parastatal under the auspices of the City of Tshwane – has highlighted the need for strengthening its partnership with the South African Property Owners Association with a view to attracting more property developers to the metro.
The agency’s chief executive, Dr Lardo Stander, said the interaction between the two parties took place during a mayoral business round-table discussion in Centurion this week.
He said the gist of the meeting was to discuss partnerships and collaboration with the association as a critical stakeholder in the capital city.
“Their membership consists of property developers, property managers, and property owners. They operate in basically all cities in South Africa. They are basically responsible for 80% of commercial property development across municipalities in the country,” Stander said.
He said it was important as critical stakeholders in Tshwane to come together and cement the relationship, “and not necessarily focusing on the problems and all the challenges that face local government”.
However, he indicated that the South African Property Owners Association representatives raised issues of concern experienced by their members in the city.
“As business sector and property owners in Tshwane and in other municipalities, they have shared concerns that deal with some inefficiencies in government processes like building plan applications and other property-related services that they do think of consistently; and the cost of various rates and property taxes,” he said.
He said the platform also dealt with the government as an enabler of a conducive environment within which South African Property Owners Association members can run their property development businesses.
“We were able to provide confidence that the City of Tshwane is busy attending to most of those issues and challenges. We have processes in place not only to build and improve administrative capacity within the City, but also standardise processes and make them way more efficient and accessible to the private sector,” he said.
Participants shared sentiments that there was a need for more intensified and deliberate stakeholder engagements jointly between South African Property Owners Association and Teda, also involving the municipality.
Stander said: “I was very satisfied with the outcome of the meeting; our initial feedback from a lot of the members were that this type of platform in the spirit of partnership being discussed was critically needed and it is something that our stakeholders have desperately been looking for. And as Teda, we are very happy for having played that coordinating role.”
Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink said property development investment is important for creating jobs and helping with the relief of poverty.
He alluded to the fact that cities in the country are the engines of the economy “and we want to understand what makes property owners invest, and what makes them stick around and what pushes them around”.
“Some of the difficult questions we had to answer were around property rates and explaining what the City of Tshwane is doing to ensure those things driving up rates and taxes are in fact controlled,” the mayor said.
To keep property rates as low as possible, he said, the City will ensure ratepayers get value for the money they pay for services; get rid of corruption and disconnect illegal connections through the aggressive revenue-collection campaign called, Tshwane Ya Tima (Tshwane switches off) if you don’t pay for municipal services rendered.
Pretoria News