Team assembled to plan post-2020 road for automotive sector

Trade and Industry Mister Rob Davies

©Sigid Kurniawan via Wikimedia

The news will be well received by the motor industry, which has recently committed to significant investments in new plant and needs certainty on the road ahead after 2020, when the existing automotive development plan comes to an end. The industry has previously complained about a lack of policy certainty.

"The purpose of this work will be to ensure that in the context of long-term policy certainty, a post-2020 master plan will create a framework to secure even higher levels of investment and production, higher exports and localisation and employment," Davies said at the launch of the eighth iteration of the Industrial Policy Action Plan in Benoni on Monday.

The technical team is led by KwaZulu-Natal University Professor Justin Barnes and University of Cape Town School of Economics professor Antony Black, and includes a range of other industry and industrial policy experts from B&M Analysts, Trade and Industrial Policy Services and senior staff of the Department of Trade and Industry.

"The mandate of the team is to examine the entire automotive sector and not just the existing automotive policy development plan, which means it will now include light, medium and heavy vehicles and motorcycles," Davies said. He said the team would engage extensively with all stakeholders, including original equipment manufacturers, component suppliers and organised labour. It would report to an executive oversight reference committee chaired by the minister.

The oversight committee will include Ford SA CEO Jeff Nemeth, Nissan MD and National Association of Automotive Manufacturers representative Mike Whitfield, National Association of Automotive Components and Allied Manufacturers' representatives Ken Manners and Dave Coffee, and representatives of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA.

Source: BDpro