Hon Speaker, hon members, allow me to say, we meet in this Sixth democratic Parliament of the people to once again reaffirm the centrality of this legislative House of our elected representatives in ensuring that the executive is held accountable.
As this is the first Oral Reply of the Leader of Government Business during this term of office, we wish to emphasise the importance of using this platform to foster the unity of our people, social cohesion across all sectors of our society and the elevation of public participation in all government structures and processes. All of us here are duty-bound to make this Assembly a critical instrument in bridging the social distance between the people and ourselves as public representatives.
In response to the question at hand, let us remind ourselves that the primary objective of our delegated responsibility of assisting the President in this important work of revitalising the rural and township economies is to ensure that we transform townships and villages from being labour and consumption reserves into thriving productive investment hubs. This is in realisation that some of the key challenges that
are faced by our people in the township and rural economies is that our SMMEs in particular and entrepreneurs in general, lack the necessary economic infrastructure, lack markets, have restricted trading spaces, constraints in terms of their logistics and uneven provision of services.
This is further compounded by a lack of proper regulation and enforcement of bylaws around where people establish and operate their businesses, leading at times to confrontations between local communities and foreign nationals. The biggest challenge we face in our rural and township economies, is the poor enforcement of the bylaws governing our economic activities. In particular, this failure at the local level tends to lead to unnecessary tensions in communities over economic opportunities, more so with foreign nationals.
As a matter of priority, we need to strengthen our institutional capacity to enforce applicable laws and regulations to enhance the ease of doing business, prevent anticompetitive behaviour, and minimise conflict in township and rural economic spaces. Revitalising the rural and township economies requires focus on the twin objectives of investing in economic infrastructure and enterprise development on one
hand, and consistent application of and adherence to the regulations as provided for in our laws, on the other hand.
Our government's interventions in this regard are focused on these two areas in order to build a platform wherein future resources can be applied to increase our impact. Our government, through the Department of Trade and Industry, introduced the Industrial Parks Revitalisation Programme in order to facilitate broad-based economic participation so that we can achieve inclusive growth and facilitate the transformation of our economy.
The purpose of this programme is to revitalise South Africa's state-owned industrial parks and enable them to serve as catalysts for broader economic and industrial development, with a specific focus on townships and rural areas. This programme seeks to modernise our industrial parks infrastructure with the main objective of accelerating economic development by attracting investment in those areas. The programme also seeks to support job creation in manufacturing and related sectors so as to address underdevelopment and unemployment challenges that lead, in the main, to out- migration into our already-congested cities.
To date, government has already revitalised 10 industrial parks in the first phase of its programme with the next phase targeting an additional five industrial parks with already money spent estimated at R300 million. These industrial parks are in Botshabelo, Seshego, Komani, Isithebe and Vulindlela, to name a few. They have already provided industrial space to over 670 enterprises which in turn, provided direct employment to over 41 000 people primarily from each industrial park's surrounding townships.
In the next four months, government will launch the township entrepreneurship fund which will assist township entrepreneurs to either scale up their existing projects or provide start-up capital for new projects. In addition to these measures, government will also support township and rural economies through: Implementing a special dispensation or set asides in the awarding of medium and long-term contracts to small businesses, co-operatives, township and village enterprises to allow for a period of incubation and other support to help reduce failure rates; increasing support measures for co- operative enterprises by implementing critical elements of the newly-amended Co-operatives Act, including putting in motion the co-operative development agency and the training academy;
and also addressing the dominance of big retail chain stores in our township and rural areas.
These interventions, Madam Speaker, are designed to deliver substantial economic impact in a financially sustainable manner. They also represent the first phase to initiatives that will leverage government procurement and corporate supply chain development programmes. If successfully implemented, all these initiatives will promote job creation and reduce the failure rate of SMMEs. Thank you very much, hon Speaker. [Applause.]