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The Mpumalanga government will now use state buying power to procure goods and services from township and rural businesses and cooperatives.
Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza said during the state of the province address on Friday that a number of economic development programmes to revitalise township and rural economies were being put in place.
Mabuza said the province had adopted a social enterprise model, which sought to unlock opportunities for community-based small, medium and macro enterprises (SMMEs) and cooperatives to manufacture and supply construction materials for government infrastructure programmes such as human settlements, roads, schools, hospitals and general maintenance of public infrastructure.
“Over the past year, we allocated R80 million to ensure the success of this programme [revitalisation of township and rural economies]. This amount was intended to stimulate economic activity,” he said.
The supply of fresh produce for government nutrition programme to schools, hospitals, early childhood development centres and the traffic college would soon be managed and provided by women and youth cooperatives, Mabuza said.
“Our plan is to empower our people starting from the manufacturers right up to the end of the value chain,” he said.
Mpumalanga announced that his government was finalising the establishment of an SME Fund to be jointly funded by the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (Mega) and Standard Bank for R500 million.
He said that despite the delay in establishing the fund, Mega had disbursed loans totalling R49.8 million for youth-owned enterprises, rural and township enterprises, and woman-owned businesses.
About 1 428 jobs were expected to be created from this support, Mabuza said.
“To date, the value of loans applications that Mega has received stands R72.7 million. These are at various stages of evaluation,” he said.
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