The Department of Economic, Small Business Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (DESTEA) will launch the Free State Black Business Chamber (FSBBC) to ensure, among other things, the realisation of a unified representative voice of black business in the Free State.

The main objectives of the business chamber is to collaborate with other stakeholders like municipalities, government agencies, sector departments, state-owned companies and development finance institutions to accelerate broad-based black economic empowerment and achieve transformation.

The chamber also has to improve the participation of historically disadvantaged groups in the mainstream economy and ensure that these groups benefit from access to development funding opportunities, supply chains opportunities, business incubation and accelerator programmes, corporate enterprise development programmes to name a few.

The chamber is thus expected to contribute constructively to policy formulation provincially and nationally with a focus on creating decent employment, alleviating poverty and reducing inequality.

The latter should be in line with the chamber membership’s ability to identify and implement sustainable high impact bankable ventures or projects contributing positively to the economy of the Free State Province.

The Free State Black Business Chamber’s membership currently constitutes of the top fifty black owned businesses classified as Big Businesses and Small Medium Enterprises from the Free State.

Another objective of the chamber will be to assist other enterprises in the province with cascading relevant information and help to organise networking forums made up of local and international stakeholders both in government and the private sector.

Source: Government of South Africa