House Chairperson, the government aims for export-led growth - it talks often of export-led growth - but if one looks at this departmental budget, the entire government of South Africa is spending R322 million, or only 3,7% of this department's budget, on promoting South African exports. That is a 6% decline on last year's budget, and I know that there is an exchange rate explanation for that. But the fact of the matter is that we radically need to increase this budget and not decrease it year on year.
Chairperson, just to give you an idea; that is less than half the budget the department is spending on administering the departments - it is spending R725 million on administration.
If you look at the export of South African wines to China, for example, you will see that we have declined 5,5% year on year in a massively growing Chinese wine market. We are losing our market share to competitor economies like Australia and Chile. Chairperson, I put it to the Minister that that's unacceptable. If we were spending enough on trade promotion and export promotion, that should not be happening.
Secondly, as regards the consumer and corporate regulation programme, the entities under this programme have been consistent nonperformers and we have very many complaints from businesses around South Africa about the performance and response times of the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, CIPC.
We know that the National Consumer Commission actually regressed in the last financial year by once again getting a qualified audit. Instead of facilitating and assisting businesses and consumers, many of these entities have in fact been a hindrance.
Thirdly, there is the consistent failure of this department to co-ordinate its economic policy across government departments. We have the Licensing of Businesses Bill coming to this House. I hope that Minister Zulu, who is not in the House right now, will object to that. For those reasons we cannot support the Budget Vote. Thank you very much. [Time expired.]