Improving the local business environment of Johannesburg

Abstract

Analysis of local business environments is an emerging theme in scholarship on local economic development (LED). South Africa's national LED framework urges local governments to foster conditions that stimulate and enable the general environment in which business is done. This article analyses findings from recent interviews conducted with 100 foreign investors and 10 business chambers on the topic of constraints to private investment in the business environment of Johannesburg. It concludes that city authorities must address a range of issues in order to enhance the local business environment. Key themes are crime and safety and security, infrastructure, the rising costs of doing business, skills shortages, and limited working relationships between city authorities and local investors.

Keywords:

• local economic development
• local business environment
• Johannesburg

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Byron Wilson for research assistance.

Notes

¹If a firm said a constraint was a major problem, the answer was weighted by two; if moderate, by one. Constraints that were not a problem or not applicable were weighted with a score of zero (Chandra et al., 2001a:6).