(Debate in Parliament: Portfolio Committee’s report on Department of Trade and Industry)
The Department of Trade and Industry has failed to achieve all five its strategic objectives and a drastic step away from a socialist policy is needed to create a competitive and sustainable economy.
This was true even before Covid-19 and is even more so now. The near future will reveal whether or not the right decisions were made.
The Department has already failed miserably with regard to the following objectives:
• To transform the economy and promote industrial development, investment, competition and job creation.
• Strengthening mutually beneficial regional and international relations to promote South Africa's trade and industry policy and economic development objectives.
• Facilitating broad economic participation by means of targeted interventions to bring about more inclusive economic growth.
• Creating a predictable, competitive, equitable and socially responsible environment, conducive to investment, trade and enterprise development.
• Promoting a professional, ethical, dynamic, competitive and client-orientated working environment that ensures service delivery.
It has already become evident that the intended inclusive economic growth, transformation and job creation instead ended up being poor governance, corruption, state capture, failed Black Economic Empowerment and quotas under the ANC government.
The future will require even more affirmative actions to redress the poverty and injustices suffered by all South Africans, black and white, under the ANC government over the last three decades. And when those actions are implemented it will apply to all races across the board.
Trevor Manuel, former Minister of Finance, has described the past three decades as "thirty lost years" and nothing but economic sabotage and theft.
Contact details: 082 466 3786 / 062 391 1804
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