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The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies says the department’s Automotive Incentive Scheme (AIS) has incentivised 193 new projects with a total investment value of R22.5bn since its inception in 2009, supporting almost 10-thousand new jobs. 

He was speaking at the National Localisation Indaba event in Durban. The event is hosted by the Durban Automotive Cluster (DAC) and sponsored by Trade and Investment Kwazulu-Natal (TIKZN).    Minister Davies said that as a country and the African continent we need to up the scale of industrialisation.  “We cannot any longer hope to continue to live, proposer, create jobs, and sustainable livelihood  of our people if we remain entrapped in the global division of labour as producers and exporters of primary products and raw materials and importers of value added products.

As long as we stay there, we will be battling over the distribution of resource rents and we will not be taking our productive economy forward. The entire African continent is coming rapidly to the conclusion that the next phase of development should involve industrialization,” he said.   Davies mentioned that over the last 20 years the government’s automotive industrial policy lever, MIDP and the recently implemented APDP, was successful in transforming the SA automotive industry. 

“The assembly industry was predominantly a fragmented low volume producer of many platforms, in a high tariff environment, mainly for white middle class consumers, to one that is now globally competitive and with greater economies of scale in production, producing vehicles for both international markets as well as South Africa’s growing middle class, black and white,” he highlighted.  According to Minister Davies, government’s sound economic policies and support for manufacturing helped avert South Africa slipping into major de-industrialisation.   “It was investment by OEMs and component manufacturers, supported by the dti’s Automotive Investment Scheme (AIS), which ensured that significant levels of the country’s manufacturing and employment base were retained.”  The National Localisation Indaba which showcases South african supplier capability will conclude tomorrow