The Black Business in the Built Environment (BBCBE) has called for government to focus on 100% ownership by black people and abandon the project aimed at creating “black industrialists”.
BBCBE general secretary, Gregory Mofokeng, says he has reservations about the term “black industrialist” that has rapidly come to dominate empowerment debates.
“Black industrialist has not been formally defined. Actually, it means a company operating “at the high end, not as a small or micro enterprise”.
Mofokeng feels that, as they stand, broad-based black economic empowerment laws have created a “plethora of minority shareholders” who do not have influence.
The Department of Trade and Industry (dti) has recently promised two different programmes aimed at “black industrialists”.
One is a “black industrialist incentive scheme”, which is not clearly defined, and the other the “black industrialist programme”, which entails the selection of 100 black-owned companies that will be built up with state support over the course of three years.
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