Photo by: Creamer Media
The National Treasury has, over the medium term, placed incentives for agriculture, land reform, manufacturing and research and development among its priorities for expenditure reprioritisation.
The Clothing and Textile Competitiveness Programme has helped sector exports grow from R7.1-billion in 2008 to R25.1-billion in 2017, and will receive its share of the R15.9-billion allocated to incentives and the Expanded Public Works Programme.
In the past nine years, 22 new leather factories have opened, creating 2 200 jobs. To augment this process, government funds will be reprioritised to the clothing and textiles production incentive from special economic zones.
Moreover, government is working with the Land Bank to accelerate land reform and maintain the productive use of transferred land. Under the Land Reform Programme, government will provide 30-year leases, which will enable the Land Bank to extend loans to emerging farmers.
Similarly, the Land Bank will use a combination of loans and grants to increase production through the Black Producers Commercialisation Programme.
Funding from the comprehensive agricultural support programme grant will be reprioritised to produce foot-and-mouth disease vaccines.
Government is also allocating funds for the South African Isotope facility at iThemba Labs to aid in research.
Meanwhile, the Small Business and Innovation Fund will help entrepreneurs and small businesses navigate the pre-startup phase and provide support as they scale up their enterprises.
This will complement the work of the CEO Initiative’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Fund, which has raised R1.4-billion to date, with about R500-million expected to be committed for debt and equity investments in SMEs by the first quarter of 2019.
The financial sector has committed to invest R100-billion over five years in black industrial enterprises and firms. The Financial Sector Transformation Council is working with the Department of Trade and Industry to finalise guidelines for the disbursement of this funding.