GOVERNMENT is planning to take its broader industrial development plans to poorer provinces and rural areas, with the trade and industry department yesterday unveiling a comprehensive policy document to promote industrial development in SA’s poorer regions.

The strategy aims to reduce the economic disparities between regions by giving particular attention to the needs of those regions lagging national norms.

It wants to achieve this by creating a predicable regional investment and business climate to attract private sector investment, improve competitiveness and diversification of regional markets and strengthen infrastructure support.

While SA has upped economic growth over the past two years, metropolitan areas have been the major beneficiaries, with the rest of the country experiencing increasing wealth and income disparities.

Economic activity in SA is clustered around three metropoles, representing 65% of SA’s gross domestic product, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said at a conference where the new industrial strategy was released.

These areas had been marginalised by mainstream developments in what had become a new form of economic apartheid, the minister said.

These lagging regions, which included the former homelands, had hardly any economic assets, were characterised by stressed natural environments and often had high population concentrations.

They also included areas that had experienced “economic shock” as a result of significant loss of mining and industrial activity.

The draft strategy document still needs cabinet approval, but is aligned with the objectives of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA, which seeks to grow the economy and halve unemployment and poverty by 2014.

Yesterday the minister also told the conference that future industrial financing would be aimed at stimulating the country’s downstream sectors