The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has facilitated the creation of 18 206 new jobs that would have been otherwise lost.
This as the IDC, which is the national development finance institution set up to promote economic growth and industrial development, released its Integrated Results for the year ended 31 March 2017 on Monday.
The results show that the IDC’s profit grew to R2.2 billion while funding approvals increased to R15.3 billion, with marked increase in approvals for black industrialists, other black entrepreneurs, women and youth entrepreneurs.
These approvals are in addition to the creation of 18 206 new jobs. It also supported the retention of 2 675 jobs that would otherwise have been lost.
The value of funding approvals increased to R15.3 billion, which is 5.7% higher than the previous year. An additional R922 million was approved from funds managed on behalf of third parties.
“In line with our strategy, majority of jobs created and saved were in the manufacturing sector,” it said.
However, the IDC said levels of disbursements remained flat, with R11.0 billion disbursed in the period compared to R11.4 billion in 2016.
The corporation has also prioritised a number of sectors and value chains such as the metals, machinery and equipment and agro-processing and agriculture. New industries identified by the corporation are those sectors which are determined by forward looking trends and innovation.
Funding for new industries approved was R227.2 million, 52% higher than in 2016, while disbursements increased by 10% to R110.9 million.
The IDC also continued to increase funding for black empowered and black-owned businesses while prioritising women-empowered businesses.
The IDC reported that the value of funding for black-empowered and black-owned companies increased by 103% to R10.1 billion.
“We recorded a significant improvement in approvals for women-empowered businesses at R3.2 billion. This amount is triple the R1.1 billion approved in 2016,” said the IDC.
When coming to youth owned enterprises, the corporation said it remains committed to support youth enterprises to the value of R4.5 billion from 2016 – 2020.
The funding approved for youth-empowered and youth-owned businesses increased to R2.3 billion in 52 transactions up from the R970 million in 19 transactions from 2016.
Approvals for businesses with women ownership was at R3.2 billion.
Meanwhile, approvals to black industrialists also increased, this as government policy related to black economic empowerment is focused on the development of black industrialists.
To support this initiative, the IDC has developed a comprehensive framework for the development of Black Industrialists which covers several areas including opportunity identification, identification of black industrialists, facilitating access to finance and increased business support.
Approvals for black industrialists came to R4.7 billion in 83 deals, said the IDC which is an entity of the Department of Economic Development.
