Patel: Competition policy must focus on jobs

Cape Town - South Africa's competition authorities will be asked to focus on jobs, industrialisation and small business development, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said on Tuesday.

Patel said in his budget vote speech that competition authorities' findings translated into R5.7bn worth of fines, penalties and mandatory development fund contributions during the first Zuma administration.

"That represented growth of almost 900 percent, demonstrating our commitment to shaping a more inclusive economy."

Over the next five years, Patel said, government would require of the Industrial Development Corporation to focus on supporting black industrialists, and on the competition authorities to promote economic transformation "not as a by-product of but an explicit objective of competition policy".

The competition bodies were in a position to contribute directly to the state's objective of creating a more equal economy, where workers shared in the benefits of growth, Patel said.

With this objective, he said, his department was in talks with the construction industry on a restitution package to redress collusion and price fixing. The end result would be larger companies providing funds to support small producers and local suppliers.

It would be based on the precedent of the agreement reached with the foreign company that sought to buy local grain and poultry company Afgri, which saw the new owners pour R90 million into a fund to support small-hold farmers with training and loans.

In terms of the agreement, reached in line with the Competition Act's public interest requirements, it has also been obliged to give the emerging farmers a 40 percent discount on storage of under ten tons of grain.

"This means families struggling to make a living on the land now have support, monitoring and finance to enter the mainstream economy."