THANDISIZWE MGUDLWA
"THE Black Industrialists Programme is ready to start", so says Trade and Industry Minister Dr.Rob Davies.
Davies says the programme will boost the number of black industrialists in the country.
With the SA Cabinet giving the policy the go-ahead earlier this year, Davies has now confirmed that everything is now in place for it to start.
According to the DTI, the Black Industrialist Programme (BIP) aims to provide financial and other support to new entrants or existing players in a bid to open up a sector of the economy that’s remained largely in white hands. The programme is aimed at creating at least 100 black industrialists in the next three years.
Dr. Davies says, “This programme will now start to operate, we will start to receive the applications.”
He says the criteria will be tight to cut out broad-based empowerment fronting and rent-seekers wanting to make a quick buck.
He further notes that industrialising is the only future for an economy battered by its reliance on exporting raw minerals and the global slump in commodity prices but that this has to be inclusive.
The minister reiterated that the definition of black industrialist would be very tight.
“We want to make sure that we are targeting the right kind of people so the definition of black industrialist is quite tight,” he said last Thursday in Parliament.
More broadly, "The policy describes a black industrialist as a juristic person that includes co-operatives, incorporated in terms of the Companies Act (2008), owned by Black South Africans as defined by the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act who creates and owns value-adding industrial capacity and provides long-term strategic and operational leadership to a business."
Dr. Davies also revealed that to benefit, those interested had to be real entrepreneurs in the industrial economy.
“We want to be very very clear that this is not an opportunity for someone who is peripherally connected to manufacturing.”
He said the programme would provide dedicated financial support and all kinds of other support as it unfolded.
“We are asking all parts of government . . . to dedicate a particular portion of their activities for the Black industrialists programme.”
Furthermore, A dedicated forum of officials will be created that would be responsible for funding decisions, he said.
“It won’t be politicians, it will be officials who take funding decisions from the participating DFI’s.”
DTI adds that the BIP programme, which is a key component of the dti’s Industrial Policy Action Plan, was approved by Cabinet on November 4 this year.
"The BIP programme will form stakeholder relationships with multi-corporations, commercial banks, development finance institutions and state-owned enterprises - all with a common goal of assisting black industrialists towards accessing capital markets and growing in the sectors that they operate in."
However, political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki takes a different stance.
Commenting last week on the BIP Mbeki said the ANC does not seem to understand how capitalism works. “I am surprised it does not understand what capitalism is. The ANC was started by a capitalist class who started businesses. They were industrialists. They did not go to Paul Kruger and say, can I set up my printing and publishing business?” The capitalist system works through innovation and is driven by individuals; it is entrepreneurs who must come up with ideas, and not government. “Governments don’t innovate, they administer,” he says.
“The idea that the ANC government can create industrialists is laughable. John Dube (founding president of the ANC) did not go to the colonialists and say, give me money to set up printers for iLanga (LaseNatal, the first Zulu newspaper in 1903).”
