BUSINESS SUPPORTS GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS TO CREATE BLACK INDUSTRIALISTS

BUSINESS SUPPORTS GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS TO CREATE BLACK INDUSTRIALISTS

Organised business has thrown its weight behind the government‘s initiative to create Black industrialists.

At a Black Industrialists Stakeholder Engagement Session hosted by the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Mzwandile Masina in Sandton yesterday, representatives from the Black Business Council (BBC) and Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) expressed their full commitment to work closely with the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) to achieve the target of 100 Black industrialists in three years.

The Chief Executive Officer of BBC, Ms Babalwa Ngonyama expressly endorsed the department’s initiative saying her organisation had taken a decision to focus their attention strongly on the creation of Black industrialists in the medium to long term.

“We fully support this programme as it is a step in the right direction. But we have identified regulation as one area that we need to look at quite carefully in order to achieve our objective. This is due to the fact that Black businesspeople get into business and are frustrated because they cannot meet a lot of the regulatory requirements designed by government. If we work together in this regard and make it easy for them, it will enable us to create these Black industrialists. We have to make it easy for businesspeople to operate in order to enable them to grow their businesses,” said Ngonyama.

She identified Preferential Procurement Framework Act (PPFA) as one piece of legislation that needed to deal. She also called for the strengthening of the implementation of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) to ensure strong Black ownership in companies that do business with government.

Ngonyama also emphasised opening of markets for Black industrialists domestically and internationally and assisting them to participate in value chains of various sectors of the economy.

The Head of Transformation at BUSA, Ms Vanessa Phala, said her organisation fully supported the dti‘s intervention to transform the country’s economy and would be a partner in making sure that more Black millionaires and billionaires were created in South Africa.

“We have made it clear to our members that it is not going to be business as usual. We need to change the way we view and perceive transformation and black economic empowerment in particular. We need to move away from the tick-box exercise and from looking at BEE as a compliance burden but try and embrace transformation,” said Phala.

She added that BUSA had partnered with the dti and conducted workshops for its members after the release of the B-BBEE Codes of Good Practice.

“As a result of these workshops, the perception of our members about the impact of the Codes on their businesses has changed from negative to positive. They realised that there was nothing sinister about the Codes and that they were implementable,” said Phala.