Speaker, I would like to respond to just two of the statements that were made. Firstly, to the one made by the hon Bhengu, welcoming the initiative of the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs with regard to electric vehicles. I just want to point out that in the next few days, the Department of Trade and Industry will be publishing on its website its own roadmap for the electric vehicle in South Africa.
This is very much aligned with the initiative of my colleague, the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs. It will deal with support for manufacturing, not for any particular model, but generically for manufacturing, as well as a broader support programme for electric vehicles. We need to make sure that when we adjust to a lower carbon economy, we also get the manufacturing benefits from that.
Secondly, I also want to make a brief comment about the statement made by the hon member from Cope, who referred to the Makhathini Flats cotton gin project. I am obviously not au fait with the details of that project. I am sure my colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, can provide more details; but she did mention that the project had gone into liquidation in 2007. I want to point out that since then, under this administration, we have introduced the new Companies Act.
The new Companies Act provides that businesses that have financial difficulties do not all have to go into liquidation, but can go into business rescue. We had a conference last week on this, and we were informed that a number of cases had already gone through. More than half of them have resulted in the saving of the enterprise concerned. We have saved more than 5 000 jobs as a result of this facility. I think that's an important improvement that could at least have addressed some of those matters ahead of that piece of legislation which was enforced in 2007. Thank you. [Applause.]