The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will, as from September 20, accept no further applications for support under its Manufacturing Investment Programme (MIP), it said on Thursday. 

“Although it was intended to be implemented until July 2014, the MIP has been met with overwhelming interest from industry, with the result being that the six-year budget that was set aside for the programme has been oversubscribed,” deputy director-general of the Industrial Development and Incentive Administration division Tumelo Chipfupa said in a statement.

While no new applications would be considered, all applications that had been registered on the MIP online system by midday on September 20 would be evaluated and considered for support, in line with the programme’s guidelines. 

The 2008 incentive programme was introduced to provide investment support to local and foreign-owned entities by offering an investment grant of up to 30% of the cost of machinery and equipment required to establish a production facility or expand an existing facility.

Its objective was to enhance the sustainability of manufacturing investment projects by small enterprises and to support large-to-medium-sized investment projects in manufacturing that would otherwise not be established without the grant.

Chipfupa said that, by the end of June, around 2 000 projects in the manufacturing sector had been approved and over R2-billion disbursed to enterprises, of which over 200, or 10% were foreign direct investments (FDI).

“The expected investment by FDI enterprises supported by the programme is more than R13-billion and over 20 000 jobs are expected to be created or sustained by these enterprises.

“In addition, over 1 000, or 50% of all approved projects were initiated by small enterprises with investments of less than R5-million per project, which are expected to create over 30 000 jobs,” said Chipfupa.

He added that the DTI was is in the process of considering amendments to the existing Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme, which would enable the continuation of support for newly establishing manufacturing projects by small-and medium-sized enterprises.

“Announcements in this regard will be made before the end of this fiscal year,” he advised.