Fighting the enemies of growth to give our trade a fighting chance
17 September 2019
House Chairperson,
The Democratic Alliance commends Minister Patel and the negotiating team, headed by Ambassador Xavier Carrim for finalising this important trade agreement with the United Kingdom last week.
It is important to acknowledge the work that has gone into this deal and succeeding where his predecessor could not.
The trade deal between South Africa, five other African countries and the United Kingdom is effectively a roll over of the European Partnership Agreement that South Africa is a signatory to.
It allows us tariff free entry into the European Union on many exports including our important agricultural sector.
Until 31 October 2019, this access via the EPA to the United Kingdom will remain.
However, should the United Kingdom leave the EU without a deal, this new agreement will come into effect.
This gives our industries and farmers much needed certainty so that they can continue to invest in their production capacities as well as maintain the 175 000 jobs which are employed by businesses and farmers that trade with the UK.
The United Kingdom is an important market for South African and Western Cape exports.
It was the Western Cape’s second largest export destination in 2018, and South Africa’s fourth largest.
South Africa's trade with the UK was worth R142 billion in 2018, and the Western Cape R9.67 billion. Wine was the leading export category to the UK from the Western Cape, with exports valued at R1.89 billion in 2018.
The Democratic Alliance believes that this agreement will provide a perfect platform to keep the status quo into the future and will allow South Africa to build on future trade negations with the UK to widen our ability to export to this market, especially in agricultural products like beef and poultry.
But this can only be done if the Government is willing, and able to map out a long term future for industry through policy certainty, export promotion and access to development finance.
Without all of these components, we will simply not be able to take advantage of our trade opportunities to positively grow our trade balance and increase employment opportunities in South Africa.
Without manufactures and farmers, we will have nothing to trade and it appears that this government is hellbent on exploring that possibility.
The ANC and EFF continue to march in lockstep towards expropriation without compensation with no clear and rational end to this debate which has drawn out for nearly two years now.
It has sowed confusion, seen land sales and prices dramatically decline resulting in decreased capital investment.
All the while, leaving productive farmers who take advantage of our duty free trade agreements none the wiser as to whether they will get to keep their farms and continue to employ thousands of farm workers.
We have prescribed assets, again championed by the ANC and EFF which seeks to steal peoples pensions so that they can continue to prop up bankrupt State Enterprises, which will have the net effect of driving South Africans to withdraw their capital and invest elsewhere.
Home affairs is a modern, local take on Faulty Towers, who takes months on end to process business visa’s, locking out CEO’s from traveling to South Africa to invest and take advantage of our preferential trade access to Europe and the UK.
Foreign tourists are routinely robbed due to a police force that is losing the war on crime with each passing day.
We run the risk of alienating the very countries who make up this deal including, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini and Mozambique by our hands off approach when it comes to xenophobic violence and targeting of foreign nationals.
House Chairperson, as a Parliament and as a country we must be clear on what we want.
We can either be a free trading country that looks to maximise and grow our opportunities that will create wealth and jobs, or we will become a closed, inward focused nation that looks to reenact the worst that the apartheid regime had to offer in economics.
And in fact a very well thought out document now exists that gives us a clear path towards the first option.
It charts the way forward with respect to industrial and trade policy and lays out in detail how trade can add 1.6% to GDP within 10 years.
That document is the Economic transformation, inclusive growth, and competitiveness: Towards an Economic Strategy for South Africa by National Treasury and championed by Minister Mboweni.
It details the tough decisions we need to make if we want to see growth in our exports.
It is clear on the choices we need to take if we want to see 1 million jobs created.
And it is honest in the hard work that will be required from all of us if we want to see South Africa working for all who live in it.
Minister, you have some tough choices to make in the coming months.
You can either choose to listen to the enemies of grow within your own party, and kow-tow to the hysterical objections of unelected, anti-job and growth hostage-taking organisations like COSATU and the SACP, or you can choose those one million job seekers who see this plan as their last hope.
We can use this new trade deal as a beacon for them that we prioritise their needs over the insatiable desire for looting, unemployment and rent seeking that the ANC and EFF lust for on a daily basis.
Minister Patel, in the Democratic Alliance, you and Minister Mboweni have a friend, a political ally and 84 votes to push forward with the changes that we need to see, or else all the hard work and the many hours to bring us to the point of success in concluding a post BREXIT deal, will all have been in vain as we will have nothing to trade in years to come.
Issued by Dean Macpherson, Shadow Minister for Trade & Industry, 17 September 2019
