A plan to grow Nelson Mandela Bay’s economy by strengthening ties between the municipality and the Coega special economic zone was rejected by councillors on Friday.
The report, authored by Nelson Mandela University heads of departments Dr Deon Pretorius and professor Ronny Ncwadi, was instead referred back to the writers.
ANC councillor Buyelwa Mafaya said a workshop needed to be scheduled before the report was submitted to the committee again.
“But if I were an investor, looking at this draft document I would run away from Nelson Mandela Bay.”
A four-month probe by Pretorius and Ncwadi uncovered that none of the key institutions in the city – the Nelson Mandela Business Chamber, Coega IDZ, NMU and the Mandela Bay Development Agency – was operating to its optimum in relation to the economic development and growth of the city.
Ncwadi and Pretorius also suggested the municipality improve its relationship with Coega, and leverage the automotive and agricultural sectors to improve the city’s economy.
They also wrote that the municipality’s political leadership was dysfunctional.
Bay mayor Athol Trollip, who chairs the committee, said the value of the information still needed to be tested.
“If the document is drawn up based on information that has been harvested from 2013 to 2018 how current is that information, how much has changed in between then and how relevant is it today?
“It’s still got mountains of work to be done with it and once we have looked at it we will go out for more stakeholder engagements before we sign off on it,” Trollip said.