House Chair, let me thank hon Nkosi for the comment on the Bangladesh bilateral relations. Last year, we exported R3 billion worth of goods to Bangladesh and that was some increase of 35%. Hon members would be delighted to know that we sell a lot of citrus fruit and we also sell minerals like coal. We sold about half a billion rand of each of those.
About hon Skosana's comments on the Gross Domestic Products, GDP, while we welcome the positive news on the economy, we know that we need to do a lot more and in particular, I wanted to highlight and point to the fact that mining expanded by 14% as my colleague, Minister Mantashe comes in, and part of the growth was in coal, manganese and of course, iron ore.
Hon Hermans, on the Mercedes Benz issue, thank you for your comment. You pointed to the expansion of Excel production in East London as part of Mercedes Benz, and I should just highlight that Mercedes Benz made a commitment of R10 billion fresh investments in the Investment Conference that was convened by the President last year. This is an example of practical action to implement that.
Finally, on hon Mantashe's comment to the National Credit Amendment Act, the portfolio committee this morning spent about three hours getting an update on where we are on implementation, some of the key issues, the rational for the law and so on. So, thank you very much for those contributions.