Cape Town – President Jacob Zuma says the newly appointed Black Economic Empowerment Council must focus their energies on coming up with policies that will help create black industrialists in townships and rural areas.
The President said this when he convened the inaugural session of the Presidential Black Economic Empowerment Advisory Council at Tuynhuys in Cape Town on Tuesday.
“In the State of the Nation Address, I mentioned government’s nine-point plan to ignite growth and create jobs.
“It is the role of the new members of the Advisory Council to ensure that the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment legislative framework through the Black Industrialists Programme achieves maximum inclusivity in terms of economic transformation, bearing in mind the goals set in the National Development Plan.
“Among key interventions, members of the Advisory Council need to tackle historical issues hindering economic transformation such as the public procurement policy,” he said.
This comes as government recently announced its bold plans to create at least 100 black industrialists over the next three years in a bid to transform the economy.
The President said due to apartheid policies, black people were excluded from the productive sector of the economy.
He said it was the role of the new council to look at past imbalances and look at innovative ways in which economic transformation can be fast tracked and how economic inclusion can be achieved.
Initiatives that President Zuma announced during his State of the Nation Address last month include 30% of all appropriate categories of state procurement being set aside for purchasing from small micro-medium enterprises, co-operatives and township and rural enterprises.
“If we are going to drive sustainable economic transformation, there has to be measures and programmes in place for government to support business, in particular black business.
“The Advisory Council members need to ensure that as part of their on-going monitoring and evaluation, the B-BBEE framework continues to attract foreign investment through the Equity Equivalent Programme,” the President said.
President Zuma appointed the new members of the council last November, and they succeed those that were part of the council since 2009.
The new members will advise government on the implementation of the amended B-BBEE Act, which President Zuma signed into law in October 2014.
Regulations that will give effect to the Act are being finalised and they will, according to government, go a long way to ensure that tangible transformation is achieved.
The President said in the past, black businessmen approached transformation in an ineffective manner, where they bought shares in big companies but had no influence on the overall operations of the respective companies.
He said businesspeople should aim to own companies that will develop and hold a stake in the production sectors of the economy.
He also said it was important that black industrialists aims to create and help consider setting up factories in townships and in rural areas to create jobs in such communities, instead of scrambling for factory space in the already congested cities. – SAnews.gov.za
