Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel on Friday defined his mandate as cutting across the terrain of different departments, firming the perception that he will be driving economic policy.

In a briefing to Members of Parliament (MPs) on his department's strategic plan, Patel stressed the need for synergy between different state departments to achieve developmental goals but gave the impression that these will be identified by his fledgling unit.

He ascribed the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) an implementation role on issues like small business development and trade optimisation.

The latter will be driven by a new focus on adjusting trade imbalances and tweaking ties to maximise job creating stimulus for South Africa, an exercise the new ministry and its advisory bodies appear set to mastermind.

"As a big exporter of minerals, it is clear that trading relations are critical. The challenge is how to do work that will give us a much more balanced trade outcome," he said.

"We have historical relationships with the US and with the European Union that we need to maintain and still ensure the best outcome for our economy that we can."

On small business, Patel said, work needed to be done to adjust outdated policies in collaboration with DTI who would inherit responsibility for "the implementation of specific programmes".

Additionally, key institutions like the Industrial Development Corporation, Khula Enterprise Finance and the SA Micro-finance Apex Fund will from April 1 report to his ministry and no longer that of Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies.

"EDD [Economic Development Department] will help to leverage the resources and expertise of these organisations to economic development outcomes," the plan tabled in Parliament this week states.

Patel said that labour markets, credit extension and job creation would also come under scrutiny from the economic development department because it falls in the domain of the micro-economy.

"We will be doing work on a range of micro-economic policy areas. Labour markets are one aspect of the micro-economy."

Speaking of the need to integrate the social economy into the mainstream, he said that a similar cohesion was necessary "even in intergovernmental relationships".

"In the paradigm where every State department is a separate domain that does not interact with the other, in that paradigm it does not make sense to have cross-cutting departments but in a notion of governance that says you can only secure for the state those goals that it sets for itself if it operates as a team, if it sees the connection of the machine, a cross-cutting team makes sense," he said.

His strategic plan also gives the new ministry an important role in macroeconomic policy, traditionally the domain of Treasury.

It stipulates that a work group from the ministry will "identify macroeconomic policy options available to the country, evaluate different options against development and decent work goals and make recommendations to Cabinet on policy issues."

The strategic plan defines the role of the National Planning Commission (NPC) as integrating different dimensions of planning, including the economic plan crafted by Patel's ministry, into a coherent whole.

Asked by MPs about the division of labour between the NPC and his ministry, Patel used the example of developing an economic plan for Gauteng province.

"If migration trends and demographic trends fundamentally alter the number of people in Gauteng, that economic plan has to respond to it.

"So one of the things the National Planning Commission will have to respond to is bringing together the different parts of the puzzle and making sure that there are not separate plans that all co-exist in parallel with each other but that they are integrated."

The government has dismissed reports of a looming turf battle between Patel and Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, who has been accused by the Congress of South African Trade Unions of power-mongering and promoting neo-liberal policies hostile to the poor.