Cosatu joins calls for VAT-free chicken prices
Move to assist consumers hit hard by rising food costs
Cosatu has joined growing calls for government to zerorate chicken products, saying this will cushion the poor.
If government heeds thecall to remove VAT from chicken on the shelves, consumers will pay 15% less for this product.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla yesterday said removing the 15% tax from poultry products would go a long way to lessen the pressure on households battered by soaring prices of food, goods and services.
“We need to support all local producers. Making poultry to be VAT-free would also preserve jobs in the industry. If the sector is struggling to survive it is going to implode and the jobs will be gone,” he said.
Pamla said the local poultry production sector was also facing a tough time from cheap chicken imports from the US.
A source in the poultry industry who asked not to be named as they were not authorised by their company to speak to the media told Sowetan that cheaper chicken would increase the demand for the product, resulting in the sector generating more income by having increased sales.
The source said after industry association FairPlay renewed its VAT-free chicken campaign recently, which was launched in 2018, this did not fly well with government.
The campaign was recently resuscitated as the minister of finance Enoch Godongwane is to deliver the national budget speech.
FairPlay founder Francois Baird said the crisis facing the chicken industry required an emergency meeting of government and industry leaders, and an emergency plan that should include the removal of VAT from the chicken portions on which lower-income households relied on for their meat protein.
“Our hard-pressed consumers are going to be hit by further rises in food prices, including chicken, and household budgets will be stretched to breaking point,” Baird said.
“The one thing that can help everybody – farmers and consumers is to remove VAT from chicken, dropping chicken prices by 15%. It is easily done, it’s affordable, and it’s urgent.
“We will provide the ministers [of finance and agriculture] with a detailed proposal on which chicken portions should be exempt from VAT – specifically those portions which are an essential part of the diet of low-income households.
“We will also present the finance minister with the petition started by a small-scale farmer calling on government to help other small-scale farmers by removing VAT from poultry feed.
That petition now has close to 5,000 signatures and we hope it will be more than that by the time budget day comes about.”