Director-General Lionel October on investments and job creation

R15 billion set aside to for new investments and job creation – Director-General October

The Director-General of the Department of Trade and Industry, (the dti), Mr Lionel October says R15 billion has been set aside for projected investments across all incentives in order to achieve sustainable growth and job creation. October was briefing the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry on the key planned interventions by the department in Parliament.
 
According to October, the performance target and the entire budget for the new financial year will be spent in trying to industrialise the country and broaden the manufacturing sector and also support businesses that have globally competitive niche in the continent.
 
“The projected number of new jobs to be supported and number of jobs to be retained from enterprises is set at 6 000 while 800 projects have been approved through our incentives schemes to support enterprises in different sectors of the economy,” said October.
 
October told Members of Parliament that the number of jobs might increase due to the upstream and downstream of jobs created in the manufacturing sector. He said it is well-known that for every one job created in the manufacturing four other jobs are created indirectly and that the figure might go up to 24 000 in addition to the 6 000 jobs initially targeted.
 
October said government manufacturing incentives, localisation and designation continued to strengthen the economy despite the negative global and domestic trading condition of our products.
 
“The other biggest problem facing the economy is still the demand for our products and services. Our factories are not running at full capacity at the moment and the majority of these are faced with the decline of procurement from our own state-owned enterprises which have reduced their orders significantly especially in the locomotive sector,” he said.
 
October highlighted that the overall South African demand for goods from Africa also decreased by 7% in the last quarter of 2017 to R28 billion from R30 billion in the third quarter in the same year.
 
He said even though the Southern African Development Community (SADC) remained one of the biggest market for South African manufactured goods in Africa accounting for almost 88% of total manufactured exports to Africa, a lot still needs to be done to target the rest of the continent.
 
Enquiries:
Sidwell Medupe
Tel: 012 394 1650
Cell: 079 492 1774
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