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The first regional leaders summit involving the Western Cape and five of its co-operation agreement partners will be held in Germany in January next year. This was announced by the Premier, Mr Gerald Morkel today.

Mr Morkel addressed the Qualification Africa 2001 "South African/German Conference and exposition on training and development at Somerset West (Embargo 18h00). The regions involved in the summit are Bavaria, Upper Austria, California, Florida and Shandong.

"I am very excited to announce today that these five regions, plus Quebec in Canada, will hold the first ever regional leaders summit in January next year in Munich. "

The initiative to hold such a summit was first discussed by the Minister President of Bavaria, Dr Edmund Stoiber, with Premier Morkel when he visited the European region with a Western Cape delegation in December 1999. On the agenda will be various regional issues of the 21st century.

Mr Morkel said the Western Cape all too well realises and recognises the importance of international relations, and has been driving a vigorous inter-governmental outreach programme over the past seven years. The province currently holds official co-operation agreements with no less than nine governments: Bavaria in Germany; Upper Austria in Austria; Florida and California in the USA; Tunis in Tunisia; Madeira in Portugal; Shandong in China; Pusan in Korea; and St Petersburg in Russia.

Mr Morkel said the Western Cape Government is forever striving to find ways to improve the lives of its people. "This is our primary responsibility. One way of achieving this is undoubtedly by providing jobs. To create an enabling environment for job creation, we need to attract investment into our province, especially from overseas countries. We need to stimulate trade, promote our province to the outside world, learn from foreign experience and build relationships of trust and understanding with people from other parts of the world."

He said in times of globalisation international networking is a proven method to generate synergy by exchanging experiences and solutions, learning from peers and initiating co-operation projects. This has also been underlined beautifully by Q-Africa 2001 during the past few days, especially with respect to the fields of training and development.

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Issued by Office of the Premier, Western Cape

11 September 2001