February is the month of love and by the time you read this letter I am sure all the stores will be littered with Valentines paraphernalia. Fortunately for those of us who love C&I, you won’t find any superficial commercialism here at the SAIMC – we are all about keeping it real and the shoulders are already to the wheel for us!
With our first council meeting of 2015 behind us, we have renewed enthusiasm amongst our councillors for making progress on the business plan in 2015. We are trying to complete outstanding objectives from last year, so the new council can pick some fresh objectives from the business plan to pursue post the March AGM.
We are all excited about the electronic elections and the results that will be presented at the local branch AGMs. We hope all our members will make the effort to attend their local AGM and meet the incoming branch committees. As mentioned last month, we hope to have lots of new blood at branch level this year. Apart from needing more hands to execute our ambitious plans, we are always in search of new ideas that will add value to our industry. These new branch committee members will be groomed to join council in future so their ideas will be able to impact the larger organisation.
On a more sombre note, we are all aware that our industry is under severe strain due to the current economic environment. Government spending on infrastructure projects has not materialised to the extent promised and the private sector is curtailing investment due to uncertainty in government policy, the poor consumer spend and more attractive investment opportunities in other countries.
With all of these challenges we as an industry need to get involved in having some say as to what happens to our future. We need to find ways to engage with both the public and private sectors and influence their decision-makers. We as an industry have a lot to offer in terms of world-class manufacturing, beneficiation of our mineral wealth, bringing jobs back to SA from the East, with low-cost, automated manufacturing, amongst other initiatives.
Thus it is imperative that we elevate the status of our industry so we can participate in forums that have the ear of decision-makers. The SAIMC will be driving such initiatives via its ever-strengthening relationship with ECSA and other voluntary engineering associations. We need to join other industry bodies and lobby government for greater policy certainty and consistency in decision making and we need to have a stable set of rules that will give investors confidence in our country.
Obviously the current electricity crisis and looming water crisis does not bode well for a booming economy, but I am sure our industry can play a leading role on both the demand and supply side of these two vital commodities? These are huge opportunities for us to make a contribution to solving our countries woes and turn a reasonable profit at the same time. We just need to be more innovative and think out of the box.
Now I will quickly step off my soap box and remind all that our Industry Calendar http://saimc.co.za/events-calendar/month.calendar/2015/02/11/- has been populated with our SAIMC events for 2015. We however, still need all our industry partners out there to send us their events, so the calendar can live up to its name and objective of recording all events happening in our industry. Once again, I encourage the entire C&I fraternity to contribute to this Industry Calendar to provide much better co-ordination of activities. Please send your updates to admin@saimc.co.za
As usual, please mail me your thoughts on vinesh.maharaj@saimc.co.za. I thank you all for taking the time to read this column. Hoping to meet you at the AGMs...
Working together, achieving more,
Vinesh Maharaj, President.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | ina@saimc.co.za |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
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