Gauteng shelves City Deep IDZ plans

Anna Cox THE GAUTENG Provincial Government has decided to shelve its plans for the establishment of an International Development Zone (IDZ) at City Deep and Kaserne. According to project manager Sipho Mhlongo, preparatory work and research has indicated that the original centre-piece of the project, an IDZ, is in fact unlikely fundamentally to improve the prospects of the area or growth potential of the province in a sustainable manner owing to the underlying inefficiencies in the two inland ports and associated services of the transport and logistics sectors. Initially the Gauteng Province, through its Blue IQ projects, envisaged having the area designated as an IDZ in terms of the Department of Trade and Industry's initiative to stimulate export-orientated manufacturing through the provision of centralised exporting services and state-of-the-art supportive infrastructure, adjacent to the country's key ports. "However, research conducted both by ourselves and the private sector has indicated that the cost and reliability of transport is a major concern for Gauteng-based firms who import and export goods through coastal ports," he said. It had become clear that there needed to be a substantive effort to increase the effectiveness of the two ports and the transport and logistic sectors so that firms in Gauteng could import containerised inputs and move containerised goods to harbours for export, more cost effectively, said Mhlongo.