ANDREW BAHLMANN: Trash anything that hinders foreign direct investment
Flows of FDI will be crucial to SA’s economic recovery and should be pursued rigorously
What SA and all of Africa need more than anything else to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic is foreign direct investment (FDI). Anything that enables FDI should be encouraged, and anything that hinders FDI should be shelved before it can do any more damage to economic growth and job creation.
That the Competition Commission is no longer blocking the sale of SA’s Burger King franchise to a US private equity firm falls squarely into the category of enabling FDI. The Burger King transaction results in the company’s BEE shareholding of 68% moving to negligible. The commission’s withdrawal from its previous stance of disallowing the deal for reasons of public interest is to be applauded — but it is the bare minimum. As a nation we ought to be actively and aggressively encouraging FDI, which has been in the doldrums for some years...
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