Economic Regulation and Cost Effective Infrastructure Delivery in South Africa: A Literature Survey

Abstract

The main objective of this paper was to come up with cost effective delivery measures for South African economic regulators. The paper drew attention to the fact that in February 2012, the President declared 2012 as the year of infrastructure delivery. The paper evaluated literature from South Africa and developing countries literature from developing countries in an attempt to observe in what way other regulators are performing. Literature on infrastructure regulation supports the need for the establishment of effective mechanisms that ensure that regulators operate in conditions that enable the provision of cost effective infrastructure. However, in South Africa, it was observed that there are also some problems that regulators face, for example, it has been seen that there is lack of coherence in the regulatory policies and regulators are inefficient. These problems make the achievement of cost effective delivery of infrastructure a difficult undertaking. It was also realized that for economic regulators to deliver costs effective infrastructure a number of measures should be implemented. These include involving private sector in infrastructure provision, increasing competition, and setting up a multi-sectoral infrastructural regulator among other things.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p195