The Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Policy is a critical intervention in South Africa’s economic transformation agenda, aiming to ensure inclusive economic participation, entrepreneurship development and support, and long-term economic sustainability.
This was said by the Chief Director of Black Economic Empowerment at the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), Mr Jacob Maphutha. He was addressing a group of KwaZulu-Natal businesspeople belonging to the VusuZulu Economy Promoters organisation in an interactive stakeholder engagement session that took place in Vryheid.
Maphutha explained to the businesspeople that the much-talked-about, and highly anticipated Transformation Fund, was part of the evolving and strengthening of the B-BBEE policy implementation, designed to address funding constraints faced by majority Black-owned businesses and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), particularly in sectors where access to capital remained a significant challenge.
“The South African economy needs innovation, entrepreneurship and investment in new businesses to be competitive globally and to achieve growth. The establishment of the Transformation Fund, which shall be implemented in partnership with the private sector, is one of the ways to ensure that the economy grows and promotes competitiveness,” said Maphutha.
He emphasised that once fully operational, the Transformation Fund would catalyse broad-based economic growth by increasing financial support for Black entrepreneurs, MSMEs, and businesses particularly in high-growth industries.
“With improved access to capital, capability, and market access, these businesses will have the resources needed to scale, innovate, and create sustainable employment opportunities. The fund will contribute towards transformation and strengthening of value chains. Therefore, the fund supports enterprise development, which is one of the key priorities of the B-BBEE policy,” said Maphutha.
“To us enterprise and supplier development is about diversification of value chain. We know that we cannot achieve its objectives if we do not partner with social partners and organisations such as Vusuzulu Economy Promoters, that have built social business and community networks to assist entrepreneurs,” he stressed.
Maphutha added that the department was rolling out interventions and instruments as part of its mandate to contribute to inclusive growth and creating employment.
“the dtic is a key department for the transformation and economic development of South Africa. Part of our mandate is to assist citizens to be active participants in this economy and be self-sufficient. We take that mandate very serious, hence the various instruments that we continue to implement and sharpen so that they respond to the needs of our people,” said Maphutha.
He added that these instruments included the Special Economic Zones and Industrial Parks programmes for spatial transformation to ensure that economic activities are spread across all regions of the country, industrial development policy, whose objective is to reindustrialise the economy by developing new industries and improving productivity and competitiveness, ensuring that the country produces products and technologies that can be sold domestically and internationally; and the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, which aims to create an inclusive economy.
“The ultimate goal of deploying these interventions and instruments is to solve the 8.5 million problem – that is the number of people that are unemployed, the youth unemployment rate accounts for 47.4%, which represents five million youth that are not employed,” stated Maphutha.
The Chief Director of Black Economic Empowerment at the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), Mr Jacob Maphutha addressing KwaZulu-Natal businesspeople in Vryheid.
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