South African firms are not as organised and responsive as needs be to exploit both international and African trade opportunities, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a business breakfast in the picturesque town of Paarl, he noted there had been high-level government visits to Brazil, Russia, India and China (Bric).
‘And what do we have to show for it?” he asked the half-dozen local business men and women who, together with members of the ANC’s Western Cape executive committee, had joined him at the five star Grande Roche Hotel.
Motlanthe is on a whistle-stop tour of the Winelands region, including visits to communities around Paarl and Worcester, six weeks to the day ahead of local government elections.
He told his breakfast colleagues that South Africa was a ‘tiny minority” in comparison with the other BRIC countries, and therefore had to become ‘more agile” in its approach to trade if it was to compete on the same playing field.
South Africa joined BRIC in December last year.
On selling goods to other African countries, Motlanthe said there was a lot of goodwill towards South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy.
‘But we must offer agility and innovation, and connect with the rest of Africa — We must be properly organised,” he said.
Only 10% of Africa’s trade was intra-African, so the opportunity was huge.
ANC provincial head, Marius Fransman, speaking in his capacity as Deputy International Relations and Co-operation Minister, said after the breakfast that the South African business community needed to become more vigorous and aggressive when it came to securing trade opportunities.
‘We are seeing that from the Chinese — they are extremely aggressive — It’s a tough world out there.”
He said government’s strategy was to foster business opportunities, but said the take-up by local firms ‘was a little bit slow”.
‘The political alignment has taken place, the framework has been created, now it is for business to be extremely aggressive,” he said. — Sapa