Fin24

Cape Town – President Jacob Zuma has chosen to reflect on the silver lining in South Africa’s dark economic cloud for his end-of-year message.
Zuma said much progress had been made in addressing the objectives of the nine-point plan he introduced at his 2015 State of the Nation Address.
Zuma’s statement follows a turbulent two weeks in the history of the South African economy after he fired the respected finance minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with the relatively unknown ANC MP David van Rooyen.

The rand hit a record low of 16.00 to the dollar before its recent recovery to around R15.00 against the greenback after Zuma did a U-turn to reappoint the more experienced Pravin Gordhan.
Zuma said the country’s automotive sector had grown thanks to the work of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Automotive Production and Development Programme.
"The APDP has leveraged private-sector investment of over R25.7bn over the last 5 years," he said in his end of the year statement of almost 5 000 words.
Zuma also singled out companies who had "affirmed South Africa as a regional manufacturing hub and have retained and expanded their investments in new plants".
"Unilever has invested R4bn in South Africa in new plants and expansions across the country," he said. He also mentioning multinationals Nestle, Samsung, and Hisense.
He said South Africa was also becoming a frontier for new sectors of Foreign Direct Investment, such as the green economy, oil and gas, shipbuilding and the ocean economy.
"Our Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme has become world renown and a policy blueprint for other countries and has attracted R190bn in investment in the four rounds of bids," he said.
Zuma said the clothing and textiles sector was successfully stabilised, was steadily regaining domestic market share and was beginning to grow exports.
The steel industry came under a lot of pressure in 2015, Zuma said, adding that the government intervened to save the industry under global steel glut conditions.
He said the jobs fund established in 2012 had, to date, created 60 675 new permanent jobs and had additionally placed 30 358 people in vacant positions on a permanent basis.