South Africa today is almost unrecognisable from the South Africa of 1994. In economic development terms, South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) has almost tripled from $136-billion in 1994 to a GDP of $384-billion in 2012. Many leading global brands have located manufacturing plants in South Africa and trade between South Africa and the rest of the world has grown massively.

However, this good economic growth performance masks a range of long-standing, structural shortcomings in the economy. The productive parts of the economy, such as agriculture, mining and manufacturing, have not grown fast enough to create sufficient new jobs, the economy remains relatively dependent on a few key sectors for both exports and growth impetus, and ‘inclusive growth’ has been elusive. Yet rapid growth in the productive sectors of the economy remains the main path to sustainable economic growth and large-scale job creation as centuries of economic history clearly demonstrates.

It is, therefore, encouraging that a growing global consensus is emerging around the role that industrial policy plays in signalling economic opportunities, addressing constraints faced by productive enterprises and developing purposeful collaborative actions of the state, business and labour to catalyse job-creating economic growth. In the UK, this approach has been termed ‘re-balancing’, while in the US, it is called ‘re-shoring’. The terminology may be different but the objectives of the re-balancing and re-shoring initiatives are the same to deepen industrial capabilities, grow the manufacturing sector and create jobs.

South Africa is, therefore, fortunate that, as early as 2007, government identified the need to deepen, broaden and diversify our industrial base and, consequently, developed the Industrial Policy Action Plan (Ipap) to align and coordinate government, business and labour’s actions.

Ipap has been progressively scaled up and the 2014/15 edition launched on April 7, 2014, comprises more than 100 actions and milestones for government and our stakeholders and partners to implement, which will have a direct and measurable impact on industrial development in South Africa. Of course, some challenges remain and new challenges will undoubtedly emerge as the global recovery accelerates. Government will continue to address these through purposive industrial policy actions – aligned to the National Development Plan – which deepen our industrial capabilities and create the conditions for inclusive growth.