Engineering News reports that manufacturing associations across a range of subsectors have endorsed a Manufacturing Circle-led initiative, designed to find ways of creating an additional one-million manufacturing jobs in SA.  

The subsectors include plastics and packaging, chemicals, agroprocessing and steel.  Manufacturing Circle chairperson André de Ruyter said the project, dubbed the ‘Map-to-a-Million’, would focus primarily on unearthing the current constraints to manufacturing investment and proposing remedies.  Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) has been appointed to conduct the study, the outcomes of which could be used to influence the future direction of industrial policy, including incentives schemes and tariff policies.  The initiative will also dovetail with the lobby group’s ‘Vaal Triangle Rejuvenation Project’ and the CEO Initiative as a way of arresting the prevailing deindustrialisation of the Gauteng region.  The study comes amid a falling contribution of manufacturing to SA’s gross domestic product, which has declined from 24% in the 1980s to less than 13% in 2015.

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