LETTER: Small businesses offer huge opportunities

Tito Mboweni was always a colourful, entertaining and solid finance minister (“Tito Mboweni retires from public office, joins property company Accelerate as chair”, January 31).

His suggestion that one of the easiest ways to create new jobs in SA was to decouple small businesses from the bargaining councils and the yoke of onerous regulations contained therein, was like a breath of fresh air. This move of decoupling small business from big business could have translated into the production of more than 1-million jobs in SA, without costing the fiscus anything.

It is a great pity that the trade union movement could not see its way clear to even consider this suggestion. Members of trade unions already have jobs and they will do everything in their power to ensure those jobs are not only protected but that the terms and conditions are improved, at the expense of job creation. The ANC, being in partnership with union federation Cosatu, could not, unfortunately, see the value in Mboweni’s suggestion.

Mboweni will be remembered for his lateral and forward thinking on possible job creation in SA. Hopefully when the ANC is removed from government we can all get on with the business of job creation.

Michael Bagraim, MP

DA deputy shadow employment & labour minister

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