Industrialisation remains a major part of the South African developmental agenda and an important vehicle towards achieving the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) target of creating 100 black industrialists in the next five years, Trade and Industry director-general Lionel October has reiterated.

Speaking at a Black Business Council (BBC) roundtable discussion on government’s Black Industrialists Development Programme, in Sandton, this week, October outlined that government saw the need for the development of 100 large black-owned and managed companies as a way of moving away from a “colonial history” of being an import-dependent economy.

“The agenda for this programme must be led and driven by black industrialists, black business and the BBC. It is through your involvement that we can determine how best to formalise and institutionalise this programme.

“This is a matter of urgency and we want immediate implementation,” he commented.

The controversial programme was first mooted in Mid-August by Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Mzwandile Masina, who said the department intended to make sweeping changes to black economic-empowerment certification processes and preferential procurement policy in a bid to create a class of black industrialists and accelerate “radical” transformation in the South African economy.

October added this week that this transformation would involve the integration and merger of the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the Black Economic Empowerment Programme under the Black Industrialists Development Programme.

The radical initiative would be further driven through joint ventures and collaboration with foreign partners, he stated.

“We will finally come up with a concrete programme and create a few institutional arrangements.

“In finance, for example, we are working on creating a syndicated relationship between the Industrial Development Corporation, the National Empowerment Fund, the Public Investment Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa so that they can work as one vehicle,” he outlined.