Gauteng To Unveil Industry Sector Plan Within Weeks

The Gauteng provincial government expects to unveil the identities of the business sectors that it plans to support under a refined provincial industrial policy action plan within weeks.

Economic Development MEC Firoz Cachalia reports that a team from the University of the Witwatersrand has completed a study of the potential industries and that his department is in the process of finalising the adoption plan.

The programme forms part of a broader national industrialisation thrust, which is also integral to the emerging ‘New Growth Path', being developed jointly by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel and Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies.

Gordhan has indicated that this new plan should aim to achieve yearly trend growth of 7% for a sustained period of 20 years, but he has also stressed that its success will depend on the development of a social compact between government, business, labour and civil society.

A national industrial policy actions plan, or Ipap2, has already been unveiled and has a focus on rebuilding South Africa's manufacturing base, particularly around the R800-billion-plus public infrastructure roll-out.

However, it also has a sector focus with automotive, nuclear, metals fabrication, capital equipment, chemicals and so-called green industries receiving priority attention.

Cachalia reports that the provincial plan will focus primarily on labour-absorbing and growth-generating sectors, with automotive, information technology and green industries likely to feature strongly.

The plan will also seek to align local industrial capacity with provincial and municipal procurement programmes that have been designed to deal with social and economic infrastructure backlogs.

The province is also in the process rationalising various economic agencies - including Blue IQ, the Gauteng Economic Development Agency and the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller - Gauteng Development Agency, into a single development agency, which will help drive the new sector vision.

"The main challenge now is to identify the sectors and to build the capacity to deliver support to them," he says.

The industrial plan would also feed into a larger growth and development vision for the province, which Cachalia expects to unveil during September.

The current suite of Blue IQ projects, including several automotive supplier programmes, would also be synchronised with the new industrial strategy.

Also high on the agenda, is the overhaul of freight logistics in the province, with Blue IQ CEO Amanda Nair indicating that new freight hubs would be created in a bid to improve the competitiveness of landlocked Gauteng as a producer of exportable goods.

A task team has been set up involving Blue IQ, the Industrial Development Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, as lead arranger, to set in motion a plan to move more freight on rail and to limit freight transit through urban centres.

Three hubs are envisaged, including:

A development in Southern Gauteng along the N3, north of Heidelberg and south of Vosloorus.
A hub at Chamdor on the West Rand.
And, a freight centre around ‘Auto City', in Rosslyn, near Pretoria.
By January, Cachalia believes that the province will be in a position to outline its growth targets and to elaborate on the instruments and incentives available to support private sector growth in the province.