Pretoria – A multi-billion investment by the Government in the manufacturing and industrial sectors is set to create 7800 jobs across the country.
Delivering his budget vote to Parliament on Thursday, Ebrahim Patel, the Minister of Economic Development, said while the economy remains vulnerable to the triple threat of unemployment, poverty and inequalities, several initiatives across different provinces have created thousands of jobs.
Patel’s address comes at the back of a release by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), which showed that the number of unemployed people had increased by 100 in between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013 to 4.6-million.
However, Patel has since disputed the figures.
He said the government, through industrial and infrastructure finance, was on track to create more jobs especially in provinces mostly affected by poverty.
Patel told Parliament that the government has improved the level of industrial funding that the IDC is making available to support local factories, farms and mines.
“The IDC has scaled up its levels of industrial funding, committing R27bn over the past two years, an increase of 48% compared to the previous two years.
“The Small Enterprise Finance Agency (Sefa) and the IDC will together make close to R3 billion available for youth employment and youth entrepreneurship over the next five years”, he said.
Patel said the Government had made significant progress in roll-out of the national infrastructure plan, with construction already taking place across all nine provinces.
He said some of the provincial initiatives includes:
- Co-funding of the construction of what has been described as the world's largest manganese sinter plant that produces 2MegaTons per annum in the Northern Cape. The plant is set to create at least 1600 permanent jobs.
- Funding a number of green economy and manufacturing projects, which together are set to create over 200 jobs in the Eastern Cape. These include the manufacturing of Solar PV panels that are able to generate 85MW of electricity per annum at the East London IDZ, as well as the establishment of a factory for manufacturing towers for wind turbines in the Coega IDZ.
- Co-funding by IDC of the new Film Studio with plans to construct a water tank facility and beach reservoir at the studio to attract big budget film productions that require ocean scenes and is set to create 513 jobs. The facility has already been utilised for productions including Mad Max 4 where Charlize Theron starred.
- Construction of a state of the art oilseed crushing facility in Mpumalanga -Standerton that will support black farmers to growth capacity for providing soya beans to the plant. The project is currently employing 12 700 people and will create additional 3000 jobs over the next two years as government continues to accelerate the construction of the R118.5 billion Kusile Coal-Fired Power Station in Mpumalanga.
- Funding of a new factory in KZN - Durban for manufacturing plastic moulded components for motor vehicles which is set to create 450 jobs, while continuing to support the local manufacturing of minibus taxis. Funding the upgrading of a sawmill near Tzaneen in Limpopo by IDC will improve its competitiveness and will help retain 449 existing jobs. Sefa has also funded a young entrepreneur who manufactures conveyor belt components for the mines.
- Funding of a woman owned and run financial intermediary by sefa to provide bridging finance, working capital and asset finance to small and micro businesses across the Free State province. The beneficiaries include farmers buying new equipment, small construction firms building roads and entrepreneurs buying a guest house.
- Funding of a semi-automated material recycling facility able to process over 6000 tons of waste per month, the expansion of a sweets manufacturing company, as well as a Biogas Plant in Bronkhortspruit will improve the greening of the country, the competitiveness of the companies and create over 350 jobs in Gauteng. – SAnews.gov.za
