By Eustace Mashimbye

LAST MONTH the latest in the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) series of Sectoral Master Plans was signed, this time for the Steel and Fabricated Metal Industry.

To date, the dtic and its key stakeholders, including the private sector and organised labour, in the poultry, clothing, textile, footwear and leather, automotive, sugar and furniture sectors, have signed agreements designed to assist these job intensive industries to overcome a variety of challenges that they have faced as part of the Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan

The master plans have targeted specific action points relating to the respective industries, but there are also generic objectives including a change in ownership and production patterns within each sector. This means, for example, transforming and assisting small-scale farmers in the poultry and sugar sectors, bringing more blackowned cut, make and trim plants in the textiles sector online and assisting new entrants into original equipment manufacturing in the automotive sector.

The master plans aim to increase localisation which will lead to re-industrialisation and growth, as well as to reclaim domestic markets lost to imports. The poultry sector is under threat from immorally dumped chicken principally from Brazil and the EU, but their master plan as well as adjustments to import tariffs are beginning to yield results and the sector is making a slow but sure recovery