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Attending international summits is not for fun, but it involves hard work, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.
"It is just meeting after meeting and pumping flesh after flesh. You promote your country, but it is hard work and it is good work that needs to be done for our beloved and beautiful SA," he said during a Parliamentary question and answer session.
While initially admitting that attending these international summits do not necessarily lead directly to job creation, he later emphasised repeatedly that it can and does create jobs.
"It simply is not true that some of the outcomes of these summits we attend do not lead to jobs created. People seem not to notice what is done in this regard," he said.
For him one of the valuable aspects of South African delegations attending international summits, is that they can contribute to an improved environment for investment.
"They provide a platform for us and business to promote investment and forge new partnerships. It can help our companies to move from contact to contract. It is difficult to create jobs and we need the economy to grow for jobs to be created," said Ramaphosa.
"We all agree that unemployment is high, and we need to do something about it. The problem is that as we create jobs, we find the net effect is diluted by more and more young people entering the job market. But that does not mean that jobs are not created."
For Ramaphosa the focus is on restructuring the SA economy.
"We inherited apartheid and colonial economy. We are restructuring that. So, you cannot tell me we have not been making efforts to transform this economy," he responded to questions raised regarding SA's high unemployment rate.
"SA is one of most the most unequal societies in the world. We must stimulate the economy to create jobs, but at the same time address the root causes of inequality."
He said over the past 18 months there have been attempts to make it easier to create jobs by making it cheaper to do business
For him the renewable energy sector is one which can be utilised to generate economic growth.
