Chairperson of the session,
Members of the Select Committee
The Minister of Trade and Industry
The Director-general and officials of the DTI, along with the Council of Trade and Industry Institutions
Leaders of Organized Business
Distinguished Guests family and friends

1. Honorable members, on numerous occasions we have pronounced the intentions of this 5th administration to lead a radical project of socio-economic transformation. This is in line with the principles of the objective of building a democratic society with developmental dividend that is shared amongst all.

2. Part of this includes working to utilize our natural resources to build an economy that distributes wealth with growing equitability for the benefit of the people as asserted by the Freedom Charter. This will be achieved through a full scale implementation of Beneficiation and value addition to our mineral products.

3. Our Industrial Policy Action Plan recognizes the need to build an economy that overcomes spatial underdevelopment. This informs our plans to facilitate industrial development in regions of our country that have a low rate of industrial activities.
4. South Africa’s industrial economy is spatially concentrated and systematically leaves out great sections of the population in investment-starved regions.

5. It is for this reason that we have underpinned out Black Industrialists Programme with the principle of spatial investment. This means that we need to create an entrepreneurial group that will exploit the industrial potential in all provinces of our country, especially rural areas.

6. We understand that a stronger base of competitive and innovative black industrialists is not only necessary but may also be much better placed to drive the government’s efforts for industrialization of all regions of our country.

7. Importantly, our Black Industrialists programme encourages the growth of industrialists whilst committing to support them also in pursuing external markets for their products. We have already made major strides in helping producers from various provinces extend their footing to these markets

8. We travelled to Zimbabwe with a delegation of more than 30 companies amongst them was Ezabathembu Water Purification and Supply CC from the Eastern Cape Province, which manufacture chemical cleaning products for residential and commercial  markets.
9. The response on their product line has been amazing and they continue engaging with prospective buyers as they aim to penetrate African markets, starting with Zimbabwe.
10. When we went to China, Yilda Manufacturing committed to establishing a blankets factory in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng. Shaanxi Authomotives is planning to invest in heavy truck assembly in Durban; Sichuan Minshan is investing in manufacturing electronics plant in Port Elizabeth.

11. The dti has numerous incentive schemes that are designed to integrate local emerging firms into industrial value-chains through partnerships with these foreign investors.

12. Similarly, as government we have committed our public procurement as one of the instruments to be utilized in advancing this objective of boosting industrial productivity in historically marginalized regions.

13. This will be implemented through the set-asides for targeted procurement from SMMEs and black owned companies. Current government threshold on set-asides is 30%. The objective is to institutionalize a 70% procurement target from emerging business.
14. State Owned Enterprises have also been drawn in to use their procurement spending to help boost emerging black business. A recent example of this is the MoU we signed with SAA on the 18 May 2015 to set-aside R10 billion from their public procurement for Black Entrepreneurs and Industrialists within the Airline.

15. Provinces need to creatively exploit these commitments by public institutions. In evolving these MoUs with parastals, our plan is to have provincial designations by these parastals so that the qualitative impact of this initiative can be measured per province.

16. As earlier stated, our black industrialists programme is designed to help black enterprises to increase their productivity in order to meet the demands of the markets broadly as well as public institutions.

Conclusion
17. Honorable members, we have an abiding responsibility to actively make this economy work for all our people.

18. The dti takes very seriously the role of government in fostering transformed economic relations. We view this in line with the national objectives of building an inclusive society.

19. It is in this context that the dti progressively evolves a policy regime that is a midwife to transformed relations of assets ownership and high economic growth.

20. Our policy objectives are designed to help the economy overcome the vitality of the market in resolving structural and social inequalities historically embedded in Apartheid state policy. This includes overcoming spatial inequalities amongst provinces in terms of industrialization.

21. In this context, our aim is not to substitute itself for private capital. The objective of the DTI is to induce the emergence of new entrepreneurial groups in critical sectors, consistent with the national transformation objectives.