The impasse over painting permit programs in South Africa is restricting the expansion of German companies in the country and threatening operations with 100,000 jobs, according to an industry agreement.
As South Africa moves towards an approval formula and makes downloading permits less difficult and faster, the visa challenge exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic has limited professional staff’s access to a country facing severe shortages of them.
Between 2014 and 2021, 25,298 professional painting permits were approved in the country of 60 million people.
“The visa factor covers the entire hierarchy of German in South Africa,” from CEOs to technicians, the South African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry said Thursday in response to questions.
“Of course, this is not only a fear for German corporations, but also for the country itself, as German corporations operating in South Africa generate jobs for another 100,000 people in their supply chains,” the chamber said.
Companies operating in South Africa struggle to find professional staff due to a dysfunctional school formula exacerbated by emigration. Volkswagen AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG operate plants in the country and the chamber has more than six hundred member companies.
Andreas Peschke, Germany’s ambassador to South Africa, estimated in the past that German corporations account for 10% of South Africa’s export earnings.
Germany is South Africa’s third-largest trading partner after China and the United States, with bilateral movement topping $20 billion last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Companies that cannot unload allow executives from local subsidiaries to enter jeopardize investments, and “the same goes for technicians who cannot enter the country, while at the same time there are no professional staff available in South Africa for the machines,” the chamber said.
The organization said that while there have been innovations this year, its members had more than a hundred painting permit programs open in the latter part of last year.
In one case, it took about 18 months to get a permit for a general manager and business owners sold after they were denied visas despite 30 years of activity in the country.
The visa approval procedure remains opaque and requests from the chamber to attend the procedure and digitize it have gone unanswered, the German chamber said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Siyabulela Qoza did answer a cellphone call or respond to a text message.
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