INDUSTRIALISATION IS A MAJOR PART OF ACHIEVING THE 100 BLACK INDUSTRIALIST DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME - DG LIONEL OCTOBER

INDUSTRIALISATION IS A MAJOR PART OF ACHIEVING THE 100 BLACK INDUSTRIALIST DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME - DG LIONEL OCTOBER

Industrialisation is a major part of the African developmental agenda and an important vehicle to achieving the creation of one-hundred black industrialists programme in the next coming five-years.

The Director-General (DG) of the department of Trade and Industry, Mr Lionel October said that.

 October was speaking at a Black Business Council (BBC) roundtable discussion on government’s one-hundred Black Industrialists Development Programme in Sandton.   

According to October, government saw the need for the development of one-hundred large black-owned and managed companies within the next coming five years as a way of moving away from the colonial history of being a dependent economy that relies mostly on imports.

“The agenda for this programme must be led and driven by black industrialists; by black business and by the Black Business Council (BBC). It is through your involvement that we can determine how best to formalise and institutionalise this programme. The aim is to create a hundred large black owned and managed companies within a period of five years. There is a matter of urgency; there is a matter of immediate implementation but there’s also a question of immediately using the opportunities that the economy offers us at the present moment,” said October.

           

On defining what the one-hundred black Industrialists development programme meant, October said“we are talking about the integration and merger of two major programmes of both the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) and government. The first is the industrialisation programme through the Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) and the second programme is the Black Economic Empowerment Programme. We want to merge these programmes under the Black Industrialists Programme,” he stated.

He added that government will be implementing the programme through the use of joint ventures by collaborating with foreign partners.

“We will finally come up with a concrete programme and create a few institutional arrangements. One is in finance. We are working on a programme of creating a syndicated relationship where we want to get in one structure the Industrial Development Corporation, the National Empowerment Fund, the Public Investment Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa as the major financiers. They should have a syndicated relationship where we can see them working as one vehicle,” he elaborated.

The Director-General concluded by announcing that the dti was working on creating a dedicated incentive for black industrialists.

 “We are in the final stages of creating these incentives and we will make pronouncements as soon as it has been approved,” he said.