Nick Wilson and Siseko Njobeni

THE black economic empowerment charter for the commercial property sector, signed on Friday by government and property industry representatives, ties signatories to reaching the charter’s targets within five years.

The short timeframe was decided on because the property sector had lagged behind other business sectors when it came to the implementation of empowerment, said Musa Ngcobo, chairman of Sapoa’s charter committee. The association is the representative body and official voice of the commercial and industrial property industry in SA.

By contrast, the targets in the construction sector empowerment charter, also signed on Friday, have to be achieved in seven years.

Ngcobo said black participation in the local property sector was below 1%.

The charter requires that companies set aside 10% of their annual dev- elopment investment for developing properties in undeveloped areas.

Andy Tondi, chairman of the committee that drew up the charter, said 35% of all asset disposal transactions would have to be concluded with groups that had black ownership components of at least 65%.

Tondi said property sector transformation was a “business imperative” rather than a compliance issue.

“You cannot have an open and accessible sector if you don’t have transformation on the agenda and you don’t have a framework to achieve transformation,” he said.

Public Works Minister Stella Sigcau drew attention to the shortage of skilled workers as a threat to the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative SA (Asgi-SA), government’s initiative to push economic growth beyond 6%. This is the growth rate at which it is expected enough jobs will be created to significantly reduce unemployment.

SA’s skills shortage has emerged as a threat to buoyant market conditions in the construction industry.

Several companies have criticised government’s inability to carry out infrastructure programmes because of the lack of skilled personnel, which has slowed the roll out of planned infrastructure projects.

Sigcau said engineers, architects and quantity surveyors were important to Asgi-SA’s R370bn infrastructure spending programme and to the construction of stadiums and facilities for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

However, the total number of registered engineers in SA fell from 15530 in 1998 to 14900 in 2004 and there were between 400 and 500 vacancies for “built environment professionals” in SA’s municipalities, said Sigcau.

The Engineering Council of SA has warned that between 500 and 800 engineers would be retiring annually from 2009 onwards, Sigcau said.

That meant more engineers would be retiring than graduating and “to make matters worse, a very large percentage of current graduates are emigrating”.

James Ngobeni, co-chairman of the committee which developed the construction charter, said the charter was likely to come into effect before the end of the year.