SA Canegrowers welcomes Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel’s gazetting of a summary of the Sugar Industry Masterplan.
This marks a major milestone in government and the industry’s joint efforts to ensure the long-term sustainability and profitability of the sector.
We also welcome Minister Patel’s designation of the industry in terms of the Competition Act for an exemption. This will allow industry stakeholders to collaborate on the implementation of the Sugar Industry Masterplan.
The Masterplan is the culmination of an extensive engagement and consultation process with all sugar industry stakeholders, social partners and government over the past few months. SA Canegrowers has been a consistent and constructive participant in this process.
The longevity of the industry has been in question over recent years due to a confluence of simultaneous threats. These have included weak protection against cheap imports, the ravages of unprecedented droughts, plunging world sugar prices and a major drop in local demand for sugar due to the introduction of the sugar tax (or Health Promotion Levy).
The recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown poses a new threat to the stabilisation of the sector. It is therefore critical that we ensure the long-term sustainability of the sugar industry, which forms the backbone of rural economies and sustains tens of thousands of livelihoods and businesses.
The Masterplan aims to achieve this over the next three years by amongst other things: increasing demand in the local market by committing manufacturers to prioritise locally grown and manufactured sugar in their product ranges; improving import protection; the development of small scale growers and increasing transformation in all sectors of the industry; production diversification support and the potential restructuring of the industry.
We will continue to engage with the Department on the details of these proposals, as well as their implementation. We would have liked to have seen, for example, a commitment to ending the sugar tax which has cost thousands of jobs in the sector.
A strong, unified transformed and competitive sugar industry is the only way we can ensure small scale growers and rural communities are able to flourish and lift themselves out of poverty. SA Canegrowers remains committed to working with all stakeholders to implement the plan, so the industry contributes to job creation and economic growth in South Africa.
