Pretoria - South Africa is committed to collaborating with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to ensure that relations are strengthened.
“There are a number of areas where South Africa and the DRC could collaborate on. South Africa is committed to working closely with the DRC in ensuring that our bilateral trade relations are strengthened and deepened,” said the Acting Deputy Director General of the Department of Trade and Industry (dti), Yunus Hoosen.
Hoosen was speaking at a Trade and Investment seminar held in Kinshasa on Monday.
The investment seminar is part of the dti’s Investment and Trade Initiative (ITI) which has taken a 30-member business delegation to the DRC.
The delegation, which represents companies in the agriculture and agro-processing, infrastructure, built environment, energy, mining and capital equipment sectors among others, arrived in the DRC on Sunday.
According to Hoosen, trade between the two countries is skewed in South Africa’s favour as it exports goods and services worth R13 billion to the DRC.
“The trade imbalance between the two countries needs to be addressed. That is the reason why as a country we are committed to putting a lot of emphasis on enhancing our economic cooperation, fast-tracking identified areas of support, and looking at infrastructure projects that we would like to work closely with the DRC on,” said Hoosen.
According to Hoosen, infrastructure projects that companies in the two countries could collaborate on include transportation, logistics, supply chain and telecommunications, ports and social infrastructure.
“Companies that form part of the delegation on this ITI possess skills and expertise in various areas and could contribute significantly to the growth and development of the DRC economy if partnerships and joint ventures were established and work begun,” he explained.
The ITI was also part of the pursuance of the four areas of economic development that the African ministers of trade have agreed upon. These are regional integration, infrastructure development, mineral beneficiation and building the agro-processing value chain.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Deputy Ambassador to the DRC, Andrew Maswanganye, said the two countries need to put more focus on their industrialisation efforts so as to eradicate poverty, unemployment and inequality.
“South Africa and the DRC need to do more to improve cooperation in economic development in order to achieve their shared vision of 2030, where unemployment, poverty and inequality will be forgotten nightmares. This calls for a greater need to industrialise our economies by utilising the natural and ecological resources, skills, technologies, and other development partnerships that we have,” he said on Monday.
The economic report on Africa 2014, which was released by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), stated that industrialisation is key for Africa to foster structural transformation.
He said the report also indicated that while services have surpassed the agricultural industry as the leading income generators across Africa, this has not created quality and quantity of jobs likely to result from manufacturing.
“The DRC government has prioritised industrialisation as the most important intervention to help put this country on the path to sustainable inclusive economic development.
“Development programmes that have been identified and shared with the SA government include the development of the Grand Inga Hydro Power complex which has the potential to be the hub of the DRC power generation industry, and which if fully exploited, can supply energy to as many as five million households across Africa,” said the Deputy Ambassador. – SAnews.gov.za
