SA industrial policy plan approved – BRICS Information Sharing & Exchanging Platform

15 March 2013

The Cabinet has approved the 2013-2015 Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) outlining government initiatives to accelerate the industrialisation of the South African economy.

“The plan builds on successive iterations of IPAP and reflects continuous improvements and strengthening of concrete industrial development interventions,” acting Cabinet spokesperson Phumla Williams told journalists in Pretoria on Thursday.

Williams said the IPAP fell under and provided one of the key pillars of the New Growth Path (NGP), an economic policy framework for 2010-2020 whose overriding objective was employment.

At the same time, she said, the IPAP was informed by the vision set out by the National Development Plan (NDP), a policy blueprint for eliminating poverty and reducing inequality in South Africa by 2030.

Growing SA manufacturing

Presenting his department’s Budget Vote in Parliament last year, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said that since its introduction over two years ago, the Industrial Policy Action Plan had stabilised South Africa’s clothing sector, turned around the automotive sector, and added jobs in the business process services sector.

The plan had also introduced procurement designation to boost local manufacturing, by designating certain products as requiring minimum levels of local production and content in order to qualify for procurement by the state.

In January, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) added electrical valves, manual and pneumatic actuators, electrical and telecommunication cables, and components of solar water heaters to the list of designated products.

Products previously designated included rail rolling stock, power pylons, bus bodies, canned/processed vegetables, certain pharmaceutical products, furniture products, and textiles, clothing, leather and footwear.

“In the year ahead, the DTI will significantly scale up designations and other procurement policy levers in support of domestic manufacturing,” Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said in January.

“This will be done at the same time as the DTI deploys a range of other supportive and inter-locking instruments to raise the competitiveness of South Africa’s manufacturers. This will be done in close collaboration with business and labour.”

Davies will provide further details of the IPAP at a launch scheduled for April.