Cape Town - Government plans to boost up support to small businesses and co-operatives by introducing a new co-operatives policy.
Briefing the media ahead of his Budget Vote speech on Tuesday, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said the policy would include setting up an academy as well as an advisory board to monitor co-operatives.
It will also involve amending the Co-operatives Act to make it easier for South Africans to run a co-operative.
The department would also be looking to revive its proposal for government to buy 10 key products and services from small business owners.
Davies said 20 000 callers had accessed the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) payments hotline, which was launched in September and is housed at the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda).
The hotline, which helps business owners claim late payments from government departments and public bodies had so far facilitated payments of R31 million to entrepreneurs, he said.
Maria Ntuli, the department's deputy minister, said there were over 23 000 co-operatives registered by the department, but that only about 2 000 were "functional", making training and monitoring of the sector vital.
She said the advisory council on co-operatives would include advisors drawn from those on the ground in all provinces as well as legal people.
Ntuli recently visited the provinces to determine the nature and problems of support to small enterprises and will tomorrow table her report on her findings before Parliament's Trade and Industry Portfolio Committee.
She said all nine provinces had co-operated, even Gauteng and the Western Cape, which did not have Seda offices.
The department was also looking at institutional support for small businesses, specifically at how to boost finance and business training and wanted to interrogate whether government support was viable and whether the country had a proper support system in place.
"Let's create entrepreneurs and opportunities for the people, so they can stand up for themselves," said Ntuli.
Commenting on his department's Industrial Policy Action Plan, which came into effect last month, Davies said his officials would hold monthly internal meetings to address the progress of the action plan.
Quarterly reports would be presented to the Economic Development Ministry, while the department would also submit half-yearly reports on the action plan to the Cabinet.
Davies said a number of task teams had already convened - including a team which was looking at ways to involve more local procurement in infrastructure projects.
He also responded to a criticism raised during the recent parliamentary hearings on the Industrial Policy Action Plan that the country did not have the capacity in government to implement such an industrial programme and should wait until capacity had been built up.
"I think our answer is learning by doing and we think that the idea that we somehow magically in a vacuum develop a capacity and then start is a mistake in notion," Davies said.
He said the success of the action plan depended on government acting as a collective and pointed out that each department had "clearly identified" who does what.
Turning to the issue of trade, Davies said 100 years after it was founded, the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) was now at a crossroads.
Sacu, he said, had not been able to extend its reach beyond that of a customs unit and needed to become an instrument for deepening integration around industrial development in the region.
However, he said during the recent Sacu summit held in Windhoek to commemorate 100 years of the trade organisation, the members made a commitment to move towards realigning the organisation to include regional economic integration.
