Please find attached soundbite by Toby Chance MP.
The Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition’s appearance before Parliament yesterday exposed its persistent underfunding of the film sector while it spends billions on other sectors, with unclear returns. The Department’s plan to solve the issue is insufficient and repeats old promises – if Minister Tau does not act fast, the collapse of South African film will be on his hands.
Despite noting that the incentive is successful, the DTIC has persistently reallocated funds away from it while accumulating billions in liabilities due to applications remaining open. We will hold Tau to his promise to engage with Treasury on recapitalising the incentive. The case he makes must be informed by a proper economic analysis of the DTIC’s incentives, many of which have far lower returns than the film sector incentive.
The DG’s characterisation of the incentive as a drain on the fiscus is precisely the problem. It is in fact likely that, given the return on investment cited, the incentive actually brings more money into the fiscus than it takes out.
The Department’s single-minded focus on heavy industry is out of date in the modern economy. Services sectors employ far more South Africans, can get up and running faster, and don’t need multi-year investment plans to be viable. They should receive funding that reflects how desirable their growth is to fix our unemployment crisis.
Pressure from DA MPs in Committee also secured a commitment from the Minister that the DTIC will abandon plans to transfer the incentive to the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture (DSAC) in the long term. The DTIC cannot abandon all funding of services sectors and hand over the incentive to the DSAC, which has persistently diverted money to Gayton McKenzie’s pet priorities rather than funding the arts sector.
After years of being ignored, the DTIC must make good on its long-standing promise of meeting regularly with the industry. It cannot continue to delay clearing debt owed to the industry, which many companies rely on to survive. And finally, Tau must take seriously allegations of malfeasance and maladministration levelled at the Department, and commit to independently investigating these matters.