Chairperson, hon Ministers of the DED and DTI, hon Deputy Ministers, hon members and fellow MECs, it is very encouraging that the broad strategic thrust of the New Growth Path is now being given detailed policy instruments and budgets by the DTI and DED, as well as by other departments, provinces and municipalities. Efforts are definitely being made on a broad front, including industrial policy, economic infrastructure and skilling.
I must also say upfront that, from the provinces' perspective, we really appreciate the increasing efforts by both the DTI and the DED to align and integrate their activities and to improve co-ordination between provinces and the two departments, as well as municipalities. However, we also note upfront that although rural development is a pillar of the New Growth Path, and correctly so, it receives less attention than the three areas mentioned above.
Moving forward, both the DTI and DED could perhaps integrate productive rural development more fully into their intervention programmes. This is crucial for the Eastern Cape, where more than two thirds of our population live in rural areas.
On the industrial policy front, we welcome the key initiatives recently announced. These are the Manufacturing Competitive Enhancement Programme, MCEP, the new SEZ policy, increased funding for IDZs, growth in funding for the Industrial Development Corporation, the formation of the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, Ipap, a local procurement accord and many others. In particular, we note the flexibility of the MCEP to support sector-specific competitiveness measures and the need to increase confidence among manufacturers to invest now in order to see them through the current period of global economic uncertainty. We look forward to seeing provincialised data on the performance of these programmes and the performance of IDC learning programmes, as well as the increased impact of Ipap at the provincial level. With regard to the SEZ, we are very keen that the two departments finalise their negotiations with National Treasury around the incentives, which are so critical for the attraction of new investment. The investment pipelines of the two Eastern Cape IDZs are healthy and the value of the Coega pipeline is some 20 times greater than the existing investment. With competitive entry-level incentives, far more could be achieved.
We are also pleased about the transition from the Motor Industry Development Programme, IDP, to the Automotive Production and Development Programme, because this creates a new space for our auto industry to continue to develop and grow for the next decade. As a province we recently launched an automotive cluster and from our deliberations in this regard it became clear that there was a broad appreciation of these efforts by the national department.
Regarding economic infrastructure, we welcome the formation of the infrastructure co-ordinating commission and the 17 strategic infrastructure projects.
In the Eastern Cape, we are seeing progress with regard to the Ngqura transshipment hub, the manganese corridor and terminal, and Transnet's commitment to increasing its investment in upgrading the East London harbour. We are looking forward to other developments on the ground, such as the N2 highway and the Wild Coast Meander road, as well as the Umzimvubu water project. Regarding skilling, we note the various initiatives by the DED and the Department of Higher Education and Training: the skills and basic education accords, planning of skills for infrastructure delivery, expansion and improvement of postschool training opportunities such as artisan development, and the upgrading of further education and training colleges, etc.
New national initiatives in industrial development, infrastructure, skilling and rural development must be made to work at provincial levels. In the Eastern Cape we will shortly be launching our own Provincial Jobs Strategy and implementation plan, which outlines comprehensively how the government's activities are being ramped up in order to achieve some of the job targets that we set for ourselves at national level and provincially. The plan in this regard is to create 150 000 jobs over the next three years. This target is aligned with the NGP job targets.
With the strengthened interventions by the DTI and DED we are confident that more can be achieved. We really appreciate the emerging, common and unified vision on economic development nationally.