S. African cabinet welcomes investment by Chinese company Hisense

CAPE TOWN, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The South African cabinet on Friday lauded the Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense for its continued Investment in the African country.

The cabinet "welcomes Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense's 72-million-rand (about 5 million U.S. dollars) Investment into its refrigeration and television production lines at its Atlantis factory in the Western Cape," cabinet spokesperson Phumla Williams said as the current cabinet concluded its program of this 5th administration before the May 8 elections.

This Investment brings Hisense's total Investment in this Atlantis plant near Cape Town to 440 million rand (about 31 million dollars), Williams said.

With the production lines expanded, 150 manufacturing job opportunities have been created, she said.

The Investment has enabled the plant to locally produce high-end energy-saving ice-cooling and air-cooling refrigerators, with an annual production capacity of 400,000 units, according to Hisense.

In addition to refrigerators, the plant also produces TV sets with an annual TV capacity of 580,000 units.

In 2013, Hisense and China-Africa Development Fund (CADF) jointly invested 350 million rand (about 24 million dollars) to establish the Hisense South Africa Industrial Park, which covers an area of 100,000 square meters. The project was the largest Investment by a Chinese household appliance enterprise in South Africa in the past 40 years.

Hisense has become a very important part of unprecedented direct foreign Investment source in South Africa over the past several years, South African Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies said earlier March when he visited the Hisense plant.

The Investment from Hisense represented an "important achievement" and "another example of the fruits of South Africa's successful partnership with the People's Republic of China," he said.

Davies added that he learned with pride and joy that the Atlantis plant has been rated the best-performing Hisense plant in the world outside China.

"This means that the plant is performing better than others based in North America and the European Union member countries. This is something we need to be proud of as a country and I congratulate Hisense South Africa for that accolade," he said.