College of Business and Economics | Annual Report 2022 84 Public and Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC) Jugal Mahabir Director: Public And Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC) School of Economics College of Business and Economics OVERVIEW The Public and Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC) was established in 2017 to fill a potential gap in the current economic and policy agenda by aligning the fields of public economics and environmental economics. Environmental issues are currently at the forefront of the policy discourse as the world battles global warming and climate change. Most remedies to environmental issues and externalities are public policy instruments, such as tax policy and regulation. As such, PEERC attempts to mobilise the critical skills and resources in both fields towards identifying and remedying environmental issues through public policy. While this is the primary premise of the research centre, PEERC endeavours to be at the forefront of both the public economics and environmental economics fields. PEERC is currently governed by a board of directors, with Dr Sydney Mufamadi as its chairperson. Mr Jugal Mahabir, Centre Director, oversees the daily operations at the Research Centre. PEERC continues to engage directly in academic and policy discourse. Over the past year, PEERC’s Director, Mr Jugal Mahabir, was invited to present at the 4th Annual Urban Economic Forum in Toronto, Canada, on the best practice and challenges of financing cities in South Africa. Mr Mahabir highlighted essential issues impacting South African cities and municipalities, including the enormous debt owed to municipalities and related performance issues. Mr Mahabir further pointed out some best practices in South African local government that can assist other African cities, including best practices in debt management and the role of South Africa’s intergovernmental supervision framework in improving local government performance. Mr Jugal Mahabir presented a webinar to the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) on the potential impacts of the new raw water pricing strategy on local government in South Africa. The webinar was attended by municipal councillors and officials. The webinar was vital in formulating SALGA’s response to public comments on the recently gazetted National Pricing Strategy for Water Use. Between January 2022 and March 2022, Mr Jugal Mahabir and Dr Isaiah Magambo engaged in several workshops with the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), the Water Research Commission (WRC), the National Treasury and a range of other stakeholders to finalise the National Pricing Strategy for Water Use. The PEERC team played an essential role in designing the new strategy for raw water charges in South Africa. Dr Frank Bannor attended the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) and the Chair of the Economics/Resource Economics of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) Winter School in Environmental and Resource Economics. Dr Bannor presented a paper entitled “Do Effective Governance and Political Stability Facilitate the Promotion of Economic Growth in Natural Resource Rents? Evidence from Africa”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjU1NDYx