How to open up the economy to boost small businesses - Yoco CEO

Katlego Maphai is no stranger to The Money Show, and he's one of the guests challenged this week to ponder which ONE THING he'd want to implement if he had the power, that could shift the future of South Africa.

The co-founder and CEO of hugely successful payments business Yoco highlights the importance of opening up the economy, but sneakily adds three sub-categories to his issue.

Top of mind for Maphai are immigration and winning what he says is the global war on talent, facilitating capital flow into the country, and fostering competition.

"There is a global war on talent; we have this amazing country that people want to move to, and we make it super hard."

"We need to open up in terms of capital, exchange controls - we need to really revisit these and see if they're working in our favour."

"The question of competition is also very important - I feel that, right now in SA, regulation is actually a competitive advantage versus something that is actually fostering competition."

Katlego Maphai, CEO - Yoco

Maphai points out that these three issues are not value-creating aspects of doing business in the country, but impediments.

"We don't want to see just one Yoco in the country. We want to see many entrants coming into the market across different sectors, but until we sort out these dimensions we're going to be counting on our one hand how many new, big emerging companies are arising in an economy as developed as ours."

Katlego Maphai, CEO - Yoco

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the conversation