Chairperson, the Minister, like Lady Macbeth, is protesting. Firstly, he tells us that what he announced today is an action plan, but what does the language say? It says the government intends to secure concessional industrial financing, will revise procurement in legislation, will deploy its trade policy more strategically, will target anticompetitive practices and will build on and broaden interventions in identified sectors.
Once again, too many intentions and too few deals done. We are being subjected to too much form and too little substance. Today we assumed that the government had finished planning the new industrial policy and the Minister was going to announce when its implementation would be.
Why is such urgency important? The Minister himself acknowledges that manufacturing, which constitutes a sizeable chunk of value-added production, has not enjoyed sufficient dynamism. In fact, he is actually agreeing that, even though South Africa has had economic growth, that growth has being jobless and this has taken place over a decade.
Figures show that manufacturing has actually gone down by 12,5% as compared to previous years. Additionally, our economy utilised only 80% of its production capacity. No wonder that we lost nearly a million jobs in South Africa recently. We need this government to put a tiger in its tank and to start driving the changes that are needed now. We need a road map.
Like the Minister of Finance who is meeting with the banks, Minister Davies should be meeting with whoever it is that will be contributing to the concessional industrial financing to announce the deal and with those who have the mettle to end the anticompetitive practices.
Likewise, you should have already tabled the procurement legislation. Each day that those loopholes remain, more of our country's assets are looted. Yesterday already, we should have put the legislation on how we are going to improve procurement.
Cope supports the green and energy-saving initiatives. That is welcome and we will abide by that. Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Applause.]