Hon Deputy Chair, to connect hon Rayi's question to the previous one, we do these things because, when you have scale, and when you are able to produce for a large market, you can bring your cost of production down and you can increase levels of investment.
So, what we have done with the UK is to enter into an agreement that is similar to the agreement we have with the European Union. It will help to industrialise South Africa by ... I can illustrate it with a product that hon Rayi will know from his province and that is the auto sector.
So, at the moment, if you take something like the Ford Motor Company, they would bring an engine from Britain. They would do a number of components in South Africa. They will assemble the vehicle in South Africa and they may sell the vehicle in Germany. That is an integrated supply chain. Because of the agreement that we have reached with the UK, we would be able to ensure that supply chain is not interrupted, which will deepen industrialisation.
However, there is another example that I can give and that is because we now have an agreement with the UK, even if and when they leave the European Union, we can sell cars in the case of the Eastern Cape to both the British car-buying public as well as the European car-buying public. So, that makes South Africa a very attractive place for everybody. If Britain and the EU don't reach an agreement, we will have preferential access to both markets.
It also allows us, as we look for fresh domestic and foreign investment, to say that we have access to a number of markets - the American market via the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to the EU market via the Economic Partnership Agreements, EPA, to the UK market through the special arrangement that we have now put in place, which is called and EPA, to the rest of the African continent through the African Continental Free-trade Agreement.
When you must decide where to put your factory that makes medicines or car parts, you look for which country has attractions, maybe incentives, skilled workers, but you also look who has access to markets across the world. So, in that sense, the British agreement will help us to deepen our levels of industrial activity and to expand some of the things that we do.
However, it cannot be done in isolation. Therefore, what we are also doing is to complement that with activities such as the investment conference, like special economic zones and other activities that will enable South Africans to come into significant market opportunities.
Industrialisation is the heart of a successful growth strategy for South Africa. We cannot shop our way into wealth. It is not how much we spend at the shopping mall; it is the value of the goods that we produce in the productive economy.
So, all of these different measures that I have spoken about speak to that one important area, which is growing the industrial base of South Africa. That is not just manufacturing; it is tourism, mining and beneficiation, agriculture and agro-processing, the digital economy. All of those constitute our industrial base. Thank you.