President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the Keynote Address at the SEIFSA Business Breakfast_3
A manufacturer deciding whether to invest hundreds of millions of rands in a transformer factory, cable plant, or fabrication facility needs confidence that there will be an order book. Predictability, as as your chairman was saying, creates investment. Investment creates capacity. Capacity then creates the jobs that we need. This is why the steel and metal fabrication master plan remains important. Government will continue working with industry, with yourselves, and labor to address the structural challenges facing the steel value chain. The future of the metals and engineering sector is inseparable from the future of our steel industry. Steel is a strategic industry and has always been from time immemorial. And without steel, there is no industrial economy. And without steel, there is no real development in the economy. Even if you were to say you just want to focus on, you know, things like AI and all that, AI requires data centers. Those data centers require steel. And they require energy. There are no transmission towers, there are no railway lines, there are no mines, and there are no factories. There can be no bridges, ports, or major water infrastructure without steel. Supporting a competitive and sustainable steel industry is therefore a national priority for us. And that is why when one of your key companies was facing real challenges, government did say, "We're not allow We're not going to allow this to fail. But support must go together with competitiveness. Our objective must be an industry that invests in modern technology, that improves productivity, that reduces its carbon intensity, produces consistently to international standards, and competes successfully in export markets as well. We must also deepen the domestic value chain. Where major equipment has to be imported, government will increasingly use instruments such as the national industrial participation program and supplier development requirements to ensure that these purchases generate the benefits for the South African economy. Now, these benefits must include local investment, technology transfers, research as well as development, and must also involve supplier development, skills, and export opportunities.