Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel
Photo by: Duane Daws
South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) will sign a ‘Joint Development Agreement’ with the Beijing Automotive International Group (BAIC) in China this weekend, earmarking the Eastern Cape as the proposed location for a new automobile plant.
Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said the IDC and BAIC hoped to finalise the feasibility studies to “enable the plant to complete construction by 2018”.
The agreement, which would be signed in Beijing on April 24, was first mooted in 2015, when BAIC indicated that it would consider establishing an automobile plant in South Africa, should the location meet its feasibility study criteria.
Should the investment proceed, Patel said it would be the first new light passenger-vehicle assembly plant to be built in South Africa in more than 40 years, with an initial capacity to produce about 50 000 cars, trucks and sports utility vehicles.
BAIC is a State-owned company and the holding company for several brands, including Beijing Automobile Works.
A day earlier, Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies reported that seven major vehicle producers in South Africa had, over the last five years, invested R24-billion into their local plants.