South Africa’s sugar farming industry, a sector that claims to have lost R1.3 billion in earnings since the advent of health taxation in April last year, has urged government to intervene or see cane croppers go belly up.
In a recent statement issued on its website, watchdog body SA Canegrowers Association (Saca) said it was encouraging that the Trade and Industry Portfolio Committee had agreed on the scale of the crisis in the sugar industry.
It added that according to its own estimations sugar tax had provided “no discernible benefits to public health”.
Moreover, it believes that at least 10 000 jobs are at risk if drastic action isn’t taken to alleviate the levy’s fallout, a situation Saca says was exacerbated when finance minister Tito Mboweni recently hiked the tax by 5.2%.
With additional challenges of plunging prices, insufficient rain, and the threat of cheaper imports, the association warned that the backbone of rural micro-economies along the coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal was in dire need of assistance.
In the meantime it awaits word from parliament about crisis deliberations Mboweni has apparently held with health minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
It stressed though that time was of the essence and that high-level dilly-dallying could have a disastrous effect on the cane crop industry.
