He was speaking at a Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme (MCEP) stakeholder engagement meeting last week. The MCEP offers incentives to drive growth and promote competitiveness of established manufacturers.
"The MCEP helped businesses to meet challenges relating to poor market demand‚ high input costs (including electricity and transportation) cheap imports and economic uncertainty‚" he said.
Davies said that embracing green manufacturing and the opportunities offered by the green economy could help industries to stay competitive as the green economy was one of the six key job drivers identified in the new growth path. "The government has moved towards supporting green economy innovations‚" he said.
"One of the key components of the MCEP is the green technology and resource efficiency improvement. The objective of this component is to support projects with green technology upgrades and business development activities that will lead to cleaner production and resource efficiency‚" Davies said.
The manufacturing sector could gain a competitive edge and increase exports by encouraging and supporting the green economy processes in the sector.
"Out of the 436 entities that have been approved since the launch of the MCEP‚ 26 are green manufacturing related and have been given grants worth about R274.7m. Large export orientated companies that have been at the forefront of investment in green manufacturing have projected an investment of R727.4bn allowing this sector to sustain 43‚784 jobs‚" Davies said.
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