Eastern Cape Premier, Lubabalo Mabuyane delivered his much-anticipated state of the province address in the Bhisho Legislature on Tuesday morning.
There was a brief delay when EFF members were ejected from the House for being inappropriately dressed - they were clad in their traditional red overalls which they also wear in Parliament.
When Mabuyane eventually got to deliver his address, he stated that in the period under review, the Coega SEZ signed 18 new investors who pledged an investment to the value of R2.6 billion. Since March 2019 to date, the CDC has already signed 4 new lease agreements with various companies all pledging to invest more than R110 million
In the East London SEZ, there are 14 projects under construction funded through the R1.4 billion DTI SEZ Fund to unlock private sector investment of R3.4 billion. These projects have created a total of 2000 direct construction jobs in the zone and this is estimated to grow to 3000 jobs by the end of the financial year.
In essence by the end of 2020, the Eastern Cape Province will see an additional 14 new factories being operational in the East London SEZ, a bulk of which will be in the automotive sector.
An additional 1600 people, particularly the youth will be employed permanently to work in these factories by the end of the 2020/21 financial year.
"We welcome the multibillion rand investment by VM Automotive in Berlin, which has already injected R450 million for the construction of a factory to supply aluminum and steel blanks to Mercedes-Benz," said Mabuyane.
"What excites us even more is that VM Automotive is the first 100% black owned firm to participate in the Mercedes Benz space and this is a good development for the transformation of the auto sector.
The auto sector is another provincial treasure that we must applaud for creating jobs in our province. New investments by ISUZU and Ford are a boost to our economy and we are in talks with Transnet to increase the capacity of the Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth railway line so that Ford can export their cars through the Port of Port Elizabeth."
In its reaction, the Democratic Alliance said the Eastern Cape is a broken province with Premier Mabuyane recycling promises that he made at last year's state of the province address.
Speaking to the media following Mabuyane's speech in Bhisho, DA's provincial leader Nqaba Bhanga said Mabuyane promised to fix local government, fix infrastructure and pay SMME's on time.
He said none of these promises and plans were implemented and instead there had been an increase in the unemployment rate.
