Minister of Trade Industry and Competition Ebrahim Patel has hailed black-owned industrialists for their contribution into the manufacturing industry and for playing a pivotal role in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Patel yesterday said the manufacturing sector had assisted the country by producing millions of required personal protective equipment, thousands of ventilators and other necessary devices at the time when there was a global shortage of essentials.
The minister was briefing the media in Pretoria to provide details on the forthcoming Black Industrialists and Black Exporters Conference next week.
“We have had successes and I don’t want to overplay these successes, but the most significant ones enabled us to build an industry during the Covid-19 period, manufacturing products that can assist with the treatment of Covid-19,” Patel said.
The Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference will further highlight and showcase the importance of the Africa Free Continental Trade Area (AfCTA) in enhancing economic development and promoting intra-trade on the continent.
Patel said the single biggest cohort of black industrialists are to be drawn from various parts of the manufacturing industry or the feeder services to manufacturing.
“The Black Industrialists Programme has been trying to bring more black South Africans into the manufacturing sectors of the economy because of the economic multiplier of manufacturing,” he said.
“Every manufacturing job creates and supports a number of jobs in associated industries. For example, the food factories we created supported the supply chain of agricultural products, transportation, cold storage and so on.
“If we take the overall storyline of manufacturing in the past two decades, we have had a significant decline in manufacturing’s contribution to GDP.
“So that led the government to say, let’s really start on a programme and we called it localisation but it’s really about reigniting industrialisation in South Africa,” Patel said.
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