In her weekly newsletter Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso has warned: “Any aspiration that South Africa has to rebuild its industrial base is disappearing before our eyes. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition should take the lead in changing that, if they indeed regard industrialisation as strategic to the growth of the South African economy. If it fails, a generation of South Africans will pay the price.”

“Manufacturing contributes roughly 12% of GDP and supports more than 1.5 million jobs directly, with multiples of that in supply chains. But we are watching this foundation erode. In the last two years alone, Bridgestone and 13 other automotive component manufacturers have shut down operations. Now Nissan has effectively exited manufacturing here, maintaining only marketing and sales functions after selling its Rosslyn plant, which had built bakkies for over 60 years, to Chinese manufacturer Chery. And the problems go far beyond the automotive sector – to cite just one example, British American Tobacco closed its remaining South African factory last year.”

“Last week Nissan announced a $45 million investment to expand manufacturing capacity in Egypt. Not South Africa. Egypt. That decision speaks volumes about where we stand in the global competition for manufacturing investment.”

“The DTIC should be the part of government that welcomes manufacturers and helps them succeed. Instead, Minister Parks Tau’s department is seemingly becoming a source of policy uncertainty that is actively driving investment away. The proposed amendments to B-BBEE regulations are a recent example.”

“Original equipment manufacturers have spent years building local supply chains, deliberately including majority black-owned businesses as part of their transformation commitments. Now the DTIC’s proposed amendments threaten to strip them of their BBBEE status because many suppliers are not 100% black owned. But this raises some fundamental questions.”