Minister Parks Tau presented the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s Annual Report for the 2025/2026 financial year to the Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition on Wednesday, pairing strong delivery against investment targets with an account of operational bottlenecks and audit challenges. The report highlighted South Africa’s performance on investment and export goals while also placing before the committee a set of questions about how the department’s programmes are funded, disbursed and coordinated with the rest of government.
The headline figures show the department exceeding its mandates by wide margins. Industrial investment reached more than R31 billion against a R10 billion target, and local procurement totalled R86 billion against a R50 billion target. Export performance followed the same pattern: global exports reached R142 billion against a R120 billion target, continental exports reached R146 billion, and exports by small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) reached R764 billion.
Tau presented these results as evidence of a department changing how it judges itself. “While facing significant headwinds, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) is shifting from crisis management to implementing a focused industrial development strategy,” he said. “The goal is to move away from merely producing paper documents toward measuring actual outcomes for the South African economy. The revised industrial strategy that mainly focuses on Special Economic Zones and industry-specific Industrial Parks is an example of such.”
On market access, the Minister said the dtic is working to diversify markets through trade preferences with the European Union (EU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), BRICS Plus, the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK) and the rest of the continent. “Efforts are being made to strengthen export promotion for manufacturing, including small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and black-owned enterprises. The dtic Group aims to achieve targets despite global uncertainty, amid conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and attacks on rule-based trade structures,” Tau said.
The report did not present an unqualified picture of delivery. Manufacturing growth came in at 0.4%, slightly below the 0.5% target. Progress on Industrial Parks was delayed by funding constraints, with only 10 of the 45 targeted parks receiving funding, a shortfall that bears directly on whether announced programmes are matched by resources. The Minister attributed the reduction in imports of rail and transport components to logistics challenges that require concessions to maintain operations in the short term, and he noted that electric vehicle negotiations with the UK remain ongoing because of concerns about domestic capacity and future investment interest.
Sectoral pressures featured prominently in his account. “Significant progress is being made in sectors like automotive through the Automotive Master Plan, but other industries face external pressure. Poultry is facing increased US demand and quota issues related to five asks from the US,” Tau said. “The steel sector is dealing with increased tariffs that match those of the EU, constraining market access.”
The report also sets out where the department’s money went, a matter of direct relevance to any committee weighing value for public spending. Expenditure was concentrated in several high-value categories: R9.1 billion was provided for industrial incentives, of which R5 billion was successfully disbursed, a distinction between allocation and delivery that shapes how the incentives programme can be assessed. External programmes such as the Social Employment Fund received R1.3 billion, while spending further included R41 million in membership fees and various transfers to non-profit organisations.
Meanwhile, on the accountability side, the dtic noted challenges relating to unqualified audits and the need to strengthen coordination with other government departments to align programmes. Both items go to the heart of how the department’s results are verified and how its work fits within the wider machinery of the state.
The South African Government News Agency’s account of the presentation, including the full set of figures tabled, is published at https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/sa-makes-progress-investment-targets. Taken together, the report gives the committee a clear basis for scrutiny: delivery well above headline targets, set against audit and coordination matters that will determine how confidently that performance can be relied upon as the department heads into its next budget cycle.