EDITORIAL: SA’s stalling motor sector
This is not a time when SA can afford to lose any more employment or investment
Back in 1986, as sanctions against apartheid SA began to bite and the economy headed into a tailspin, General Motors (GM) disinvested from its South African operations, selling its Port Elizabeth-based operation to a management consortium. Now GM is to disinvest for a second time after it returned to the newly democratic SA in the 1990s. And although this time its decision is not about SA as such, it highlights the industry’s vulnerability to such exits and raises some questions about SA’s industrial policy and its exports. It is little comfort that for GM, the South African divestment comes at the tail end of a global retreat that has resulted in the company exiting Europe and Russia as well as Indonesia and Thailand in an effort to improve its subpar profitability. It will stop selling its cars in India as well, although it will hold on to its Indian manufacturing plant, which will produce for export to Latin America. GM, which makes two Chevrolet models and the Isuzu bakkie at it...
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