Honourable Members,   For South Africa to achieve the levels of economic growth it needs, it is essential that government and business work together to scale up investment in infrastructure.   This includes undertaking structural reforms to remove the binding constraints of energy supply and inefficient freight and logistics.   Government has committed to an ambitious infrastructure build programme.   Infrastructure spend by government will encourage and enable greater private sector investment in sectors such as electricity generation, electricity distribution, rail rolling-stock and water distribution.   However, there is an important distinction to be made between public and private resources.   Resources held by financial institutions including pension funds are the funds of workers, whose hard-earned money will be used for their retirement. They are not state resources.   To facilitate infrastructure investment, government needs to provide these savers with a reasonable return and ensure that these funds are safeguarded.   The National Treasury amended Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act in 2022 to enable longer term infrastructure investment by retirement funds.   The amendments introduced a definition of infrastructure and set an upper limit of 45 percent for investment by pension funds in infrastructure.   To further facilitate investment in infrastructure and economic development, the limit between hedge funds and private equity has been split.   There will now be a separate and higher allocation to private equity assets. It is increased from 10 percent to 15 percentto allow for greater investments in infrastructure by these entities.   In the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement of October 2024, the Minister of Finance announced work underway on mechanisms to complement the changes to Regulation 28 through the development of specific investment vehicles to simplify and incentivise institutional investors.   Details on these mechanisms will be published in the upcoming Budget.   #RamaphosaQandA