Department of Trade and Industry deputy minister Mzwandile Masina said emerging farmers were set to benefit from the department’s “black industrialist programme” which would be launched soon.
Among other things, the programme would facilitate “cheap loans to entrepreneurs” through Land Bank, the Industrial Development Corporation, and the Public Investment Corporation and other developmental financial institutions in the country.
Masina said farmers would be given support to export their products to the country’s trading partners in the BRICS economic bloc.
The Agroprocessing Industry Summit was also attended by Gauteng Premier David Makhura, and Gauteng MEC for Economic Development, Environment, Agriculture, and Rural Development Lebogang Maile, among others.
Maile said the focus would be on the province’s southern and western corridors as the programme had the potential to give the corridors a new lease on life.
However, the former Gauteng ANC Youth League chairperson was not happy that industry remained “untransformed and monopolistic in nature”.
He said his department was holding meetings with big business to buy directly from emerging farmers, in an effort aimed at opening up the markets to them.
