Hon Deputy Chairperson, let me thank hon Rayi for highlighting the work of the NEF, I really appreciate that, and also for acknowledging the work of the Industrial Development Corporation, IDC. In fact, over the last number of years, the IDC has been a significant promoter of the Black Industrialist Programme which has invested well over R20 billion in expanding the opportunities for black South Africans in the economy.
It has supported a number of youth programmes, and I should say, for black youth and white youth, and it has supported programmes for women. It has helped all of those to create a broader base as we indicated in the earlier reply. The National Empowerment Fund has not been financed with fresh grounds from National Treasury for a number of years now. By the way, similarly, the IDC has not received a cent from Treasury since the start of our democracy. In fact, I
think that the last time the state capitalised the IDC was probably in the 1950s, so thereabout.
So, what the IDC has done is, it uses its balance sheet to generate its income that is used to finance its development mandate. We are now looking at how we can leverage more of a partnership between the NEF and the IDC, because I have a colleague who hon members know very well, because he addressed you in the parliamentary question session earlier today, and when I said that we need more money, he tells me that there is no money.
He is one of those colleagues who is sympathetic towards what we do, but he says that at this stage, finding significant new resources it's a difficulty. So, our response is to see how we can deepen the partnership between the IDC and the NEF? How we can use these programmes that I have spoken about, the equity equivalent and the competition programmes, hon Rayi, that you so kindly again referred to in your earlier question, and use those as means of unlocking resources that the NEF, the IDC and those companies that themselves can use?
We have also asked the NEF to think of innovative ways of generating resources. For example, it has got capability that it can use to
administer empowerment funds of different government departments, and doing that, it can bring down the cost of that administration for the departments concerned, and get access to fresh capital. In fact, it has done that in the tourism area already, with a tourism empowerment fund arrangement which it does in partnership with the Department of Tourism.
So, in the time where there are fiscal pressures, we've got to be more creative and more inventive to find ways in which we can get a lot done with a little bit of resource. So, the combination of these various issues that I have raised will constitute how we will try to work closely to enhance the impact of the NEF. Thank you.
IsiZulu: