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South Africa: Manufacturing, Tourism Sectors Incentivised
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BuaNews (Tshwane)
3 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Michael Appel
Pretoria
South Africa's manufacturing and tourism sectors will as of 21 July receive investment support in the form of financial grants.
The Department of Trade and Industry's (dti) Enterprise Investment Programme was launched Thursday.
Minister of Trade and Industry Mandisi Mpahlwa said: "We will be making these sectors more attractive to people to invest in.
"The idea is to attract investment into [geographical] areas outside of the developed metropolitan municipalities in order to spread development and labour absorption."
The Enterprise Investment Programme will be gazetted on Friday.
Deputy Director General of The Enterprise Organisation (TEO) at the department, Tumelo Chipfupa said the new programme would replace the Small Medium Enterprise Development Programme (SMEDP) which was offered from 2001 to August 2006.
The Enterprise Investment Programme is made up of the Manufacturing Investment Programme and the Tourism Support Programme.
"An investment grant of 15 to 30 percent of qualifying investment costs will be provided covering the plant, machinery, equipment, commercial vehicles, land and buildings," said Mr Chipfupa, adding that the investment per project was capped at R200 million.
Previously the maximum was R100 million per project.
"There is a Foreign Investment Grant for companies looking to relocate oversees and locally which is capped at R10 million," said Mr Chipfupa.
He explained that there were various qualifying criteria which a company would have to match before a grant was given.
These include their Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) status, whether the company will be located in a high unemployment area, how labour absorbent the company is as well as whether they are in the clothing and textiles industry.
For the Tourism Support Programme, the objective, he said, was to stimulate job creation outside of traditional destination clusters, as well as increase BEE participation in the tourism sector.
To be eligible for the support programme, companies need to employ a minimum of 8 people and must score at least a level 4 on their BEE contribution.
Mr Chipfupa said the department will be accepting applications from 21 July 2008, and the programme will run for the next six years.
The department has encouraged private sector financial institutions to work together with government on the sector incentive schemes.
Director General Tshediso Matona, speaking at the launch of the programme, said his department was serious about the building of a strong, diverse and flourishing manufacturing sector in South Africa.
"We take this work seriously in the department as it is part of our core mandate of industrial development. We did a review of what the dti has done and could do to support industry."
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He said increasing industrial development was one of the Apex Priorities identified by President Thabo Mbeki in his State of the Nation Address earlier this year.
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