DEVELOPMENT PLANNED IN SOUTH AFRICA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 189, 22 July 1940, Page 7

DEVELOPMENT PLANNED IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa ia planning on n large scale for the greatest industrial development the country has ever known, 'when the war is over, one of the main features of whicli will, be the establishment of a native ship-building industry. At the outset, skilled workmen will be required from overseas, while the outside plates and the engines for the ships will at first haVe to be imported. But the activities of the South African steel industry are being extended so rapidity- that it will soon be prepared to meet all the demands of ship-builders. With a South African merchant fleet plying between the Union's ports and neighbouring territories in the north, the way will be open for marketing the products of the protected neAV industries and the expansion of existing ones. Deserving new industries will ieceive aid from the new IndustriaJ Development Corporation, which will also give special attention to developing the nation's base metal resources. The existing textile and chemical engineering industries offer considerable scope for expansion, as it is' held there is a great and almost unlimited mSrket in the northern territories ta be exploited. At the moment, considerable attention has had to be devoted to the wartime needs of the country, but conversion of the peacetime industries to a war footing is being undertaken in a way which will cause a minimum of dislocation when nor xnal conditions return. Careful co-oidination of wartime production is rapidly fulfilling the aim of making South Africa as near ly self-sufficient as possible. So far as howitzers, trench mortars and bombs are concerned, the Union will very shortly bo in i r>osi tion to manufacture its own require ments in full.