Pretoria - The Department of Trade and Industry (dti) will continue its efforts to support the agro processing sector, with R1.2 billion already having being spent towards this in the last five years.
“It is not by incident that since 2009 we have, as a department, supported agro-processing industries to the tune of R1.2 billion. Agro-processing is a critical element of our Industrial Policy Action Plan [IPAP].
“Agro-processing is important because when you have an existing agricultural activity and you add value to the crops produced through agro-processing, that’s where the real income and real job opportunities lie,” said Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies.
The Minister was speaking to workers and businesspeople at the Callie De Wet Hall in Robertson in the Western Cape on Monday.
Agro-processing is one of the manufacturing sub-sectors identified in the IPAP as a vehicle for value-addition to the country’s agricultural products.
The Minister’s visit was part of the department’s ‘Taking the dti to Factories’ campaign. Through the campaign, the department’s leadership interacts with manufacturers and exchanges ideas on industrialisation efforts.
It’s a platform to identify opportunities, challenges and constraints that the department could help to unblock so businesses can grow and create employment for surrounding communities.
Minister Davies emphasised the importance of agro-producing by citing a KPMG report released in May this year, which showed that Africa produced and exported US$6 billion worth of coffee.
The coffee was then turned into products outside of the borders of the continent and sold for a total of US$100 billion, meaning US$94 billion of the value was captured outside the continent.
“The promotion of agro-processing, which will add value to our agricultural products, is an extremely important stream of industrialisation - not just in our country but across the African continent at large.
“This is underscored by the identification of a number of directions by the African Ministers of Trade that this continent needs to move along if we are going to industrialise. One of those is to provide more support to agro-processing industries,” said Minister Davies.
He said the establishment of agro-processing industries drives agricultural production in areas where there is no pre-existing agricultural production. One of these is the packaging industry, which the Minister said was able to grow and flourish because of progress in agro-processing.
“Agro-processing is the subsector where we have deployed the largest chunk of our financial resources. Our Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme (MCEP) is another evidence of the importance that we attach to agro-processing as a department.
“This is a programme through which we say to manufacturers, ‘while we support you with trade remedies, defending your share of the local market through developmental approach to tariffs and the work that we do in trade negotiations, we think that your future actually lies in raising your competitiveness’,” said Minister Davies.
Prior to addressing the gathering, Minister Davies visited Unipack, a fruit packaging company, and Robertson Winery. – SAnews.gov.za
