Government’s priorities for 2018

Government will embark on a number of measures to address unemployment, forge ahead with localisation and ensure transformation in industrialisation.

“We are one people, committed to working together to find jobs for our youth; build factories, roads, houses and clinics; prepare our children for a world of change and progress; and build cities and towns where families are safe, productive and content,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address.

Government's localisation programme will help stimulate manufacturing and designate products like textiles, clothing, furniture, rail rolling stock and water meters for local procurement.

“We have already spent over R57 billion on locally-produced goods that may have been imported from other countries,” said President Ramaphosa.

Special economic zones remain important instruments that government will use to attract strategic foreign and domestic direct investment and build targeted industrial capabilities and establish new industrial hubs. President Ramaphosa stressed that industrialisation must be underpinned by transformation.

Through measures like preferential procurement and the black industrialists programme, South Africa is developing a new generation of black and female producers that can build enterprises of significant scale and capability.

The President said government will improve its capacity to support black professionals, deal decisively with companies that resist transformation, use competition policy to open markets up to new black entrants, and invest in the development of businesses in townships and rural areas. “Radical economic transformation requires that we fundamentally improve the position of black women and communities in the economy, ensuring that they are owners, managers, producers and financiers,” he said.