Our business community often seems reluctant to project the great potential of our economy. This is something that the international investment community has begun to remark upon. But there have recently been encouraging signs that such negativity is becoming a thing of the past. We think for example of recent statements by Anglo-American and Sanlam executives that South Africans should stop speaking ill of our own country, but work together to promote it and show our real strength. Foreign business and government delegations which visited our country recently with some negative perceptions, left greatly encouraged by what they saw for themselves.
New opportunities bring new challenges.
The desperate shortage of skills that is the legacy of apartheid education needs to be overcome. Business in particular can play a major part in the massive training programme that forms part of the macro-economic strategy for growth. We need all businesses to throw their weight, as many are doing, behind the National Crime Prevention Strategy. This includes fighting fraud and corruption within the business community itself, as part of the government's greater campaign to deal with corruption wherever it occurs, including in government and the police. Today we share common goals of growth, prosperity and economic development in this province.