ADDRESS BY THE MEC FOR ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENT, AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT, LEBOGANG MAILE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE TABLING OF THE 2013/14 ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT; GAUTENG LEGISLATURE

30 September 2014

Honourable Speaker and Deputy Speaker

The Honourable Premier

Colleagues in the Executive Council

Honourable Members

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my privilege to table before this House the 2013/14 Annual Report for the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Honourable Speaker, the 2013/14 financial year is significant in a number of ways.

Not only does it usher us into the historic milestone of our twentieth anniversary of freedom and democracy, but also it marks the end of the fourth term of the democratic government.

The year also leads us to a critical phase in our going transition to a National Democratic Society; that is truly united, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous.

This phase, which we in the ANC have correctly characterised as the second phase of transition, will be underpinned by determined, focused, radical, bold and decisive action to accelerate the pace of social and economic transformation.

As we begin this important phase of our transition, we do so satisfied that we have, during the fourth term of governance and in the preceding terms, laid a firm foundation for us to make new and decisive advances in our on-going endeavour to build a better life for all.

The 2013/14 Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, we are tabling today, gives a detailed account of the progress made by the Department in delivering on its mandate.

The Report also highlights the challenges faced by the Department and the steps it will be taking to deal effectively with those challenges.

Honorable Speaker, we count among the many successes of the Department the fact that expenditure trends continue to improve, indicating the Department’s enhanced ability to spend on its conditional grant and equitable share allocations.

For the review period the Department spent 99,4% of its allocated budget.

The main reason for the 0, 6% under-spending were the unfilled vacancies for the greater part of the financial year, due to difficulty in obtaining suitably qualified individuals.

Plans, including training and retraining of staff, are in place to address this challenge.

Although a lot more work still needs to be done to ensure that the Department meets all its targets, we are however encouraged that it achieved 83% of the targets set for the 2013/14 financial year.

Some of the specific achievements include the approval of the Gauteng 20-Year Food Security Plan, which aims to address in a comprehensive way the challenge of food insecurity in our province.

We have also approved the Gauteng 5-Year Acid Mine Drainage Plan, which outlines our response to the challenge of mine water contamination in our province.

We continued with the implementation of our Maize Triangle Programme, one of whose pillars is the establishment of domestic and international markets for maize farmers in our province.

Assisted by this programme, the Zivuseni Agricultural cooperative comprised of 35 local small maize producers exported 72 tons of maize.

In addition the Siyibane Farming Project exported 164 tons of maize to Lesotho.

We expect more farmers to export maize and dry beans after the harvest for the current plantation season.

To us this is an important step in ensuring that we expand access to opportunities in the mainstream of our sector, including at all levels of the value chain.

Through our Agro-processing programme we assisted farmers within the Maize Triangle with packaging facilities, grain silos and abattoirs.

In addition 28 Agro-processing projects outside the Maize Triangle were supported.

Going forward we will upscale our agro-processing initiatives and support programmes.

This we will do to give effect to the pronouncement by the Premier to position agro-processing as one of the key drivers of our programme to transform, modernize and reindustrialise Gauteng.

Our ultimate goal is to position Gauteng as a major hub for agro-processing both in our country and in the SADC region.

As part of our farmer support programme a total of 143 smallholder farmers were assisted with production inputs, during the review period.

In order to strengthen the skills base within our sector we awarded 50 biotechnology bursaries and made available 25 internship opportunities.

Honorable Members we pride ourselves that our performance in processing development applications through the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system remains the best in the country.

We have improved efficiencies in this important regulatory area, resulting in 314 Environmental Impact Assessment applications being processed during 2013/14.

Despite this we have not rested on our laurels. In the coming months further efficiencies to improve our response and turn-around times will be introduced.

We will also improve communication with our stakeholders in this area through, among others, regular EIA Open Days, wherein as the Department we engage with our stakeholders on how we can work together to further improve the efficiency of our EIA processes.

In order to respond to the global challenge of climate change and in line with the National Climate Change Response Strategy, we continue to take measures to measure, report and verify Green House Gas emissions within our province.

In this regard, last year we completed phase one of the Green House Gas Inventory project, providing a framework for the measurement and reporting of Green House Gas Emissions.

Phase two of this project will be undertaken during the current financial year.

We continue to pay attention to coordinating the work done across the province to ensure sustainable rural development.

This includes support for farmers in the rural areas, establishment of community food gardens and support for cooperatives.

Our focus on sustainable rural development will be increased in the coming months in line with our goal to build sustainable livelihoods for our people, especially in the rural areas.

As part of our overall commitment to breaking the back of monopoly capital and democratising ownership patens within our sector, we continued last year with the facilitation of equity schemes.

One of the agreements we facilitated and concluded has resulted in employees acquiring an equity stake in the company where they have been working.

Honourable Members we are determined to ensure that agriculture, the environment and rural development in our province take their right full place as some of the drivers of radical social and economic transformation.

This determination has found expression in our Annual Performance Plans and has resulted in us identifying key game changers which we will implement vigorously in the coming months.

We trust that we can rely on the support of this House as we position our sector as one of the critical levers for us to make further advances in our goal of building an even better Gauteng for all.

Thank you.

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