NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
WRITTEN REPLY
PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION NO: 200
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 12 February 2015
Mr M S Mbatha (EFF) to ask the Minister of Economic Development:
(a) What has he found the relevance of his department to be in light of the
existence of the National Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry
and (b) what meaningful impact has his department had on the functioning of
the Government and the transformation of the
economy?                 NW217E
REPLY:
The Departmentâs mandate is to:
1) assist with integration of work on the economy across different
departments, public entities and spheres of government, in which
capacity it works closely with a number of national departments
including the National Treasury and the Department of Trade and
Industry.
2) facilitate agreements between government and social partners on key
issues in the economy, which has resulted in Social Accords covering
areas such as the green economy, local procurement, skills development
and youth employment
3) develop the work that led to the adoption of the New Growth Path as
the economic strategy of government, which placed employment and
equality at the centre of economic policy, and which forms an
operational plan for the National Development Plan;
4) provide key technical services to the Presidential Infrastructure
Coordinating Committee (PICC) that has contributed to the associated
improvements in the scale and effectiveness of infrastructure
investment, in line with the National Infrastructure Plan, as provided
in the Infrastructure Development Act of 2014;
5) align the IDC work with that of the New Growth Path, which led to the
doubling in the envelope of lending by the Industrial Development
Corporation over the past five years, to well over R50 billion;
6) ensuring that competition authorities tackle cartels and monopolies
more actively, which helped to support efforts by the Competition
Commission that led to fines and penalties equal to R5,7 billion in
the five years to 2014 â that is ten times as high as in the previous
administration.
More details of the impact of the Departmentâs work in these and
associated areas can be found in the various annual reports, copies of
which are available on www.economic.gov.za.
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