There is little that is new in government’s newly released industrial policy framework, says the Democratic Alliance (DA).
”The policy is low on measurable outcomes, and nowhere speaks to the important Millennium Development Goals of halving unemployment by 2014,” DA trade and industry spokesperson Pierre Rabie said in a statement on Friday.
The long-awaited National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) was unveiled by Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa in Pretoria on Thursday.
Rabie said the NIPF showed ”a real disconnect between what the state has in mind, what the government is able to do and what is going on or needed by the targeted industries”.
The framework lists four sectors as key areas, including transport, the motor industry, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and forestry and paper.
”The plan prioritises little more than the continuation of state-led sector-specific development programmes identified under the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgisa) and the continuation of the Motor Industry Development Plan (MIDP),” Rabie said.
This approach was tremendously resource and capacity-intensive, and wholly inappropriate for implementation by a government that was ”under-capacitated”.
It was also not suited to a lead department such as trade and industry, which was ”widely believed to be in chaos”.
Cross-cutting actions specified in the plan did not address important issues such as lowering the costs of doing business, boosting productivity and solving problems in the government’s small enterprise development and skills development regimes, he said. — Sapa