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The DA has vocally opposed job-destroying legislation and policies such as the Employment Equity Amendment Act, the Expropriation Act, the BBBEE Act and the Mineral Resources Amendment Bill, among others, because they are all anti-growth and this economy must grow for jobs to be created.

Now, the Department of Health has announced its intention to ban the sale of single cigarettes, often the mainstay of 3 million informal traders. Once again, departmental policy exemplified by this heavy-handed approach fails to recognise the real consequences to the livelihoods of vulnerable members of our society and probable loss of jobs from counter-productive laws.

The legacy of state capture, cadre deployment, corruption, unaccountability and hollowing out of skills has gutted the state’s ability to provide the basic services required for a modern economy to function. This is compounded by the devastating legacy of bad policy, that the national government continues to inherit from the 6th, 5th and prior ANC-led governments.

Until the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition introduces cross-cutting regulatory reforms, these obstacles to investment and growth will continue to stand in the way of the job creation agenda South Africa needs. International observers are stating this clearly in their analysis of South Africa’s economy.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), in its latest report on SA, finds our regulatory environment is the most restrictive of the countries surveyed. SA is twice the average for Group of Twenty (G20) emerging market and developing economies on licence and permit requirements.

The Swiss-based IMD World Competitiveness Centre’s 2025 competitiveness rankings place South Africa 64th out of the 69 countries ranked. The IMD report states, “economic competitiveness is synonymous with people’s quality of life, and governments play just as important a role as companies.” South African businesses are the driver of economic growth and job creation and without a capable state they will continue on an uphill struggle to survive and prosper in an increasingly competitive world.

The DA calls for the Department of Trade, Industry & Competition (DTIC) to speed up the legislative and regulatory reforms needed to urgently address South Africa’s historical un-competitiveness.

We are encouraged by the DTIC’s proposed “Omnibus Bill” which it has committed to table in the current financial year. The Omnibus Bill intends to amend, among other pieces of legislation, the Companies Act, Infrastructure Development Act, Drug Trafficking Act, Legal Metrology Act, Land Alienation Act, Liquor Act, intellectual property laws and laws related to the commercialisation of cannabis.

This bill, to be effective, must reduce red tape and the legislative and regulatory impediments in these laws that undermine competitiveness and add to the cost of doing business.

The DA will be watching closely as the DTIC prepares the Omnibus Bill to ensure it gets to the root of the reforms necessary to reduce red tape and improve business competitiveness.

Issued by Toby Chance MP - DA Spokesperson on Trade, Industry & Competition