READER LETTER | Chicken importers must check facts

The new year is barely underway and chicken importers are already exaggerating, this time about rebates on chicken import tariffs.

Of course, importers have welcomed minister of trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel’s irrational rebate scheme to cancel or reduce chicken import tariffs, because it offers them two paths to increased profits.

Firstly, the scheme incentivises additional imports, so importers will benefit from higher volumes. Secondly, lower import duties are an opportunity to increase profit margins for them.

They don’t seem to have passed on profits from low-priced dumped imports in the past, and there is no sign that they will do so now. Despite all his gushing about the supposed benefits of the scheme, Roy Thomas is but the latest importer to make no commitment to ensure that all of any new discount gets through to consumers.

Thomas writes as if the scheme is operational. It is not. Rebates are now available but they have to be applied for, and hopefully the barriers indicated in the scheme will be applied as stated.

Rebate permits will be granted if there is a shortage of chicken in the South African market, and if that shortage is caused by outbreaks of bird flu. But both conditions do not currently apply.

The shortage of chicken that importers predicted for late 2023 and into 2024 didn’t happen. Chicken is in oversupply now and prices are dropping, not increasing. We have to check the chicken facts.

Francois Baird, founder of the Fair Play movement