Hon Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to share with our hon colleagues the importance of this, the Southern African Development Community, SADC, services protocol, which is why we need to support it. I am pleased to say and to share with the House that the members of a multiparty committee all supported this. So, thank you very much for the efforts. The SADC Protocol on Trade in Services is indeed a significant step in this quest to pursue and strengthen regional integration.
This dream of regional integration did not begin with Rhodes's Cape to Cairo. Rather, it was envisaged centuries before, as evidenced through the Mapungubwe empire, which led to the Kingdom of Zimbabwe of Africa and Kwame Nkrumah's vision of Pan-Africanism. Today, under the leadership of the ANC, President Zuma and Minister Robert Davies, this vision is being translated into reality. Yes, the integration of the African continent is underpinned by the SADC services protocol, which directly promotes regional integration.
South Africa's commitment to intra-African trade and the Industrial Policy Action Plan, which informs our Strategic Trade Policy, will grow a developmental, regional economy through the co-operation between the various economies and countries. You may ask what the point, or the objectives, of this services protocol is. We should never forget that mining, manufacturing, no matter what you are doing in the productive area, require services to be put together, as it were. In this regard, a little example is communications. We need communications.
Other services would be transport, IT and financial services, to name but just a few. There is no trade without financial services. There are many other things. Services also include the tourism sector and, of course, the agricultural sector.
Analysts have actually said that strategic trade, not aid, contributes to sustainable development and the elimination of poverty. Analysts have said freer and greater trade between African countries will stimulate local economic growth and create jobs by attracting more domestic and foreign investment and by cutting a reliance on expensive exported goods. Let's build our local economy and, in that way, we may just cut our current account deficit.
South Africa has a well-developed services sector, possibly the most developed in Africa. However, the need to further develop the sector has become, without a doubt, more prominent in the last 10 years, particularly because the country, faced with the challenges of unemployment and a lack of skills, took the decision to promote this, together with manufacturing.
The services protocol is a tool representing deeper integration within the SADC, from which South Africa will directly benefit through increased availability of competition, quality services and enhanced economic activity.
There is another issue that we should not ignore. When you are looking at the current account deficit itself, you may ask yourself why we are talking about the current account when it is supposed to be the SADC services protocol. It is because there is a relationship between that and trade. It is a very significant one - the region's economic development.
In its broadest sense, for those of us who may not know clearly what that is, it is the broadest measure of the country's trade in goods and services. Unfortunately, we do know that it widened. The question becomes why it widened. Did it widen because manufacturing dropped? No, manufacturing went up. So, why did it drop?
One of the reasons for this is a very simple one. The Americans play around with the money. First of all they said, let's have great quantitative easing, and through it open and lower interest rates. All the money went out and came to emerging economies. Of course, when they wanted to bring it back, they just sort of tapered the whole thing off, slowed it down, so that the money started coming back to the United States. Notwithstanding that, our manufacturing was increasing and our whole economic environment was becoming attractive. We cannot ignore the quantitative policies practised by other countries. We have to take them into account. [Interjections.]