Key agri opportunities in South Africa

Earlier this week, the Department of Trade and Industry minister, Dr Davies, introduced the Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs) for the next two years. These are areas within the economy which hold greater promise to earn foreign exchange and grow jobs, and which therefore enjoy government incentives and support.

Key opportunities of interest to this website are listed here, and linked to the relevant chapter in The Agri Handbook:

• Fruit juices, indigenous teas (Red bush/rooibos and Honeybush), fruits and wine
• Fruit and vegetable canning
• Cassava (to increase production so as to replace imports)
• Biofuels
• Small-scale milling
• Broilers (chicken meat)
• The intervention in the food-processing sector is a skills programme
• Aquaculture
• Forestry (sawmilling, furniture manufacturing)

Although not agricultural of nature, of interest is the focus on renewable energy. Between 2011 and 2013 more than R100 Billion was committed towards developing renewable energy projects in this country. This is mainly solar and wind energy.

The oil & gas sector is also looked at (including shale gas).

Interested in which South African agri sectors are set to receive energy and attention from government as per its strategy?

The Department of Trade & Industry identifies economic sectors and subsectors to which it should lend its weight. These sectors have potential to grow jobs and the economy, all the more so if government could lend a hand. These areas for government attention can be found in South Africa's Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs).

We will look at which areas are of interest to agriculture in the IPAP for the years 2013/14 - 2015/16, and provide a link to where overviews of those sectors can be found in The Agri Handbook.

Key action programmes still include the following from the previous IPAP:

= development of a food processing strategy and action plan
= development of a soybean strategy action plan
= development of the organic food sector
= development of the small-scale milling industry
= enhancement of the competitiveness of the domestic fruit and vegetable canning industry

Although not specifically agriculture, we mention here the so-called Green industries (which include renewable energy).

Areas covered in the previous IPAP which have not been renewed are the implementation of the water efficiency programme for the sugar sector and the promotion of rooibos and honeybush exports.

Aquaculture is identified for increased intervention, as are biofuels and forestry.

A new programme in agro-processing is that of supporting the public-private partnership for food security, primarily through increasing the participation of smallholder farmers in the formal agro-processing sector. This is to happen through giving these farmers access to the retail sector, government procurement and small-scale processing opportunities.

National Development Plan (NDP) - back in the spotlight

As the name suggests, the National Development Plan (NDP) is a plan -- surprise, surprise -- to develop the nation. It identifies the challenges facing the country and sketches solutions in order to triple the economy by 2030 while reducing unemployment and inequality levels. Although it is central to the Plan, the NDP goes beyond the economy looking also at issues like national unity. Find the National Development Plan (NDP) here.

In a meeting at the Chris Hani Institute recently, attended by both Jeremy Cronin and Bobby Godsell, attention has once again been focused on the NDP. Cronin is the deputy minister for Public Works, deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and an African National Congress National Executive Committee member.

Cronin's criticisms include:

• The negligible target for reducing inequality (from 0.7% to 0.6& on the Gini coefficient over the next 17 years). Not much of a target, is it?
• That the NDP forsees the manufacturing sector shrinking from 12% of gross domestic product to 9.6% in 2030.
• The NDP is not a state planning commission so how will the Plan be implemented?

For Cronin a broad vision needs to be built around reindustrialisation, the provision of infrastructure and the developing of skills.

Godsell, the current Business Leadership South Africa chairperson and someone well known in business circles, urged the meeting to view the Plan as a living document. The Plan was "eminently debatable".

There was agreement that a State planning entity working alongside a more independent, non-government body was a good thing. Godsell saw Government-only planning as having the tendency to be non-integrated (operating in silo's) and thus ineffective. It was good to have people not in government, thinking out of the box in addition to a State planning entity.

Both saw the NDP's planning for the long-term as a positive.

Agriculture, the Agricultural Business Chamber (Agbiz) in particular, has held the NDP as holding much promise for the country. Find the article written at the beginning of 2013 by Dr John Purchase here.

The NDP is covered in the Job creation chapter of The Agri Handbook for South Africa (in particular, see the "Ideas to promote economic growth" heading). In addition, many of the crop and livestock chapters have some reference to that particular sub-sector's potential to contribute to job creation, including the areas identified in the Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs) like rooibos and organic produce.

We would like to think we are contributing to the debate.