South Africa’s underperforming business environment is a key barrier to attracting private investment, expanding firm capacity, and enabling job creation. Declining competitiveness and a lack of sustained reforms have worsened business confidence and slowed economic growth. This note draws on global best practice to explore how countries have successfully tackled business environment challenges through institutional coordination, high-level political ownership, and active private sector engagement.

The Subnational Doing Business (SNDB) study, commissioned in 2014, provided a diagnostic of regulatory performance across nine cities and four ports in South Africa, revealing significant variation in local implementation. It also demonstrated that many constraints can be addressed by replicating existing good practices already found within the country. The note highlights how tailored, well-governed reform programmes—with clear goals, private sector participation, and strong monitoring—can create the conditions for inclusive economic growth.

The publication was prepared for the Cities Support Programme at National Treasury, with support from the World Bank Group and SECO.