Industry bodies, government and labour on Monday signed a “Buying Local Pledge” in an effort to promote procurement of locally manufactured goods and services.

The signing took place at Proudly South African’s (Proudly SA’s) second Buy Local Summit, in Johannesburg, which also marked the launch of the organisation’s festive season Buy Local Campaign.

The pledge, which Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies and Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel signed on behalf of government, served as evidence of the trade and industry sector’s commitment to boosting the economy through local procurement, Proudly SA CEO Lesile Sedibe said.

The Community Constituency, Business Unity South Africa, the Manufacturing Circle and the Federation of South African Labour Unions also signed the pledge.

The signing coincided with the launch of Proudly SA’s Local Procurement Accord Database on its website www.proudlysa.co.za. Local manufacturers and services providers which are tax compliant and registered for value-added tax can register on the database, which is visited by companies seeking specific products or services.

“All their details, including their industry, subsector, black-economic empowerment ranking and physical address will be available for interested parties.

“What we are trying to achieve is local procurement of products and services,” Sedibe noted, adding that the database was a “significant turning point” for Proudly SA.

Meanwhile, Davies said the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was working on a new wave of designations, which included solar water heaters, school and office furniture, as well as cables that would be applied in infrastructure programmes going forward.

Last year, the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act was promulgated under which the DTI stipulated sectors and products that departments, agencies and State-owned enterprises had to procure from local manufacturers or providers.

The first wave of products was designated, and this included rolling stock, buses, canned vegetables, clothing, textiles, footwear and leather products and set-top boxes, while certain pharmaceutical products were selected in the wave of designations.

Davies also said that the DTI would also launch a website in the near future that would serve as a monitoring system and platform where parties could inform the department of cases where regulations were not implemented.

Information regarding misconduct would be submitted by email or a call centre line.

“No single policy, instrument or initiative on its own will turn back the tide; the successful utilisation of all polices instruments we have, including that of localisation and local procurement, can have a very discernable impact,” Davies stated.

Patel said the argument for local procurement was already made, and that the task would now be to shift consumer decisions, which were mostly biased towards imported products, as the local equivalents were suffering under a questionable reputation as far as quality and cost was concerned.

“We need to change our national sentiment. We need to change the mind-set of procurers and ordinary individuals to make conscious choices in favour of buying South African,” the Minister indicated.

Further, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe pointed out that as the country sought to promote South African products, it must do so well aware that its people, as consumers, were spoiled for choice.

“This challenges us to be more competitive in terms of quality, price and desirability of South African goods.

“Proudly South African must, therefore, continuously improve ways to develop and identify unique selling points of South African goods so that consumers find them more appealing than imported goods," he said.

Motlanthe urged government, organised labour, manufacturers and retailers to work together in support of the 52 Proudly South African programmes to achieve these goals.