South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies has said paying workers low wages in the textile sector won’t make it more competitive and desirable in advancing manufacturing in the country. The minister was speaking at the Prestige Clothing Factory which is the manufacturing arm of Foschini in Cape Town today. Davies visited Prestige Clothing Factory and Damen Shipyards Group as part of “Taking the dti to the Factories” campaign. The campaign is aimed at offering the political leadership of the department an opportunity to interact with directors of companies which have received funding from Department of Trade and Industry (the dti), in order to assess the impact of the financial support. In a statement, Davies said even though the sector still remains a challenge and export had gone down over the years, the government had put a number of measures in place like (duty credit certificate schemes, tariff reduction, etc). “In order to address these challenges in the sector the dti introduced the Clothing and Textiles Competitiveness Programme which had had a big impact so far including the saving of the 69,000 stable jobs. The programme has also been responsible for the introduction of the vertical cluster through the Competitive Improvement Programme (CIP). The Foschini Group was the first big retailer to embrace the dti CIP concept by forming the first vertical ordinary cluster which was formed and approved in April 2011,” said Davies. Davies added that The Foschini Fast Fashion Cluster was valued at a total cost of Rand 32,791,604 of which Rand 24,593,703 was funded through the CIP whilst 8,197,901 was their contribution and the other comes from the industry itself. “Total funds allocated to the second phase was Rand 32,780,550 of which Rand 8,195,138 is the consortium contribution whilst the CIP contribution is Rand 24,585,412. This has shown that as a retail group, Foschini is currently leading in terms of a vertical cluster that has value chain representation,” he said.
