Chicken Industry

Importers wrong again

Unati Spiers, head of the Emerging Black Importers and Exporters of South Africa (Ebiesa), was quoted by the Sunday Independent as saying that the SA poultry industry had applied to ITAC for a review of the import tariff structure as a “ploy” to avoid talking about transformation.

The industry has actually spoken quite a lot about transformation. However, if quoted correctly, this convoluted reasoning evades the fact that the review of import tariff structures is contained, in detail, in the poultry master plan. Spiers signed that plan and should therefore know its contents.

She should also know that ITAC is investigating tariff structures not at the request of the poultry industry but at the direction, in a government gazette, of Ebrahim Patel, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition.

Has she been misquoted? Or, in her zeal to attack the master plan to which as a signatory she should be committed, has she forgotten important details?