Chairperson, I think most of the contributions were quite serious in the debate. Unfortunately, I don't think we would be able to respond to all of them in detail. What I will give is an undertaking that we will look through the Hansard when we get it. We will make an opportunity to try to respond to all of them in detail.
I just want to try to respond quite quickly to a number of them. Firstly, Chairperson Gamede was quite correct when he said that ultimately we are going to be judged by what we contributed to job creation. I think what is important about the mandate of the current administration is that job creation is not some incidental outcome from other goals, but it is actually the fundamental rights at the heart of this.
The seriousness of the challenge that faces us is that we are trying to do this in the midst of a very serious global crisis. Otherwise, I think some of our successes would have to be measured in terms of how we could work to save jobs.
On a lot of things that people spoke about, for example, effectiveness of programmes and things like that, I want to say that what we have in place is the policy frameworks, both the industrial policy and the enterprise development. Broadly speaking, we do have the frameworks. The challenge now is to implement them more effectively.
I have been saying that for both of them, there are three C's in some of our challenges. The first one is cadre development. We are going to have to find more people in this country who are going to be recruited into our department and other departments in the economic cluster, who can provide the skills and services that we need. We have been doing quite a lot of work in the last few weeks, recruiting some people into some key positions.
The point is we actually have to be much more active in training people. I have recently appointed a part-time advisor and his first task is to start to liaise with universities about how we can develop a series of courses and programmes so that we can train people for key positions.
The second C is consultation. We need to have much more continuous consultations with economic actors. The third one is co-ordination. It is co-ordination between different agencies that report to the Department of Trade and Industry and the different arms of national government. In my speech I was trying to say that it is between the spheres of government. I think that this House will be interested in those fundamental challenges.
Our approach in trying to resolve the threat of deindustrialisation and job losses is shaped by the national framework agreement, as the hon Chen said. The Industrial Development Corporation has identified that it had some R6 billion available over two years to support firms in distress. It is not just a question of providing funding, but it is also a question of putting that against programmes that are actually going to make some turnaround a real possibility and also against some commitments around job retention. That is what we are working on. In some sectors, we are very close to reaching agreements which would be quite significant.
The next industrial policy action plan is due to come out in January. We are looking for a higher impact one than the previous one. In the meantime, we are doing some work. We are broadening the automotive development programme to include heavy and commercial vehicles. We have been working energetically to try to make sure that we achieve more local production from the infrastructure programme, which is the main countercyclical response.
If there are cases where people have applied to our agencies and have been given a run-around for 18 months, that is unacceptable. It would be very useful if Members of Parliament in this House and in the other House would give us those details when they happen so that we could follow them up. My motto in terms of trying to make sure that we work better is continuous improvement. I don't think there is a magic bullet or a form of restructuring that is going to deliver. What we actually need to do is to continuously improve our ability to deliver on the programmes which we already have in place.
The position in the chief operator office is still vacant and the advert is still out for that post. That is a critical post which we would like to fill very soon. A number of members have asked about the division of labour between ourselves and Economic Development. I would like to say that that hasn't been finalised yet, but Economic Development can play a role in policy development co-ordination. I alluded to that in my speech - that even across the spheres of government there would be some functions transferred to them in the toolbox. What there would not be is some kind of serious dismemberment of the Department of Trade and Industry.
We are working very closely with the Department of Economic Development. In fact, the debates and discussions that we are having on our side are to try and strengthen them in their role, because I see it as quite critical.
In terms of the incentives, hon Mnguni, I think the picture is that I would argue that without those incentives we wouldn't have achieved what we had achieved. But can they work better? Clearly so! Are there some that perhaps haven't achieved what they should have achieved? Very likely. That is also part of the continuous improvement.
I said that most of the contributions were actually serious, and we want to reply to them seriously, but there was one exception. Let me just respond to that by starting off with a quote from the world famous great economist, John Maynard Keynes. He was writing in the age when there wasn't such gender sensitivity He said that practical men, who imagined that they are under no intellectual influences, are usually the slave of some defunct economist.
I would like to just leave it to the hon Mr Sinclair to work out which defunct economist he is a slave of. I just want to say to him that there is no serious government that is trying to grapple with the real, serious challenges of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
There is no example anywhere in economic history where a country has shifted from an economic regime characterised by diminishing returns and set itself on a growth path characterised by increasing returns and that it has done so on the basis of the crude ideological clap-trap that he regaled us with this afternoon. I am sorry; that was not a serious contribution and I can't give him a serious answer. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.