ANC bill not ‘woo’ tactics

THE ANC has denied that it introduced the National Credit Bill to woo voters before next year’s elections.

The bill seeks to create debt relief measures for struggling consumers.

The opposition warned yesterday that the bill should not strangle creditors to the point that it caused them to collapse.

The chairperson of the portfolio committee on trade and industry, Joanmariae Fubbs, said the bill had been in the making for years, and its intention was not to attract voters to the ANC.

She was backed by ANC MPs Thozama Mantashe and Adriaan Williams.

The bill has stated that of the 24.68 million people who are on credit, a total of 9.69 million are in debt. This constitutes 39.3% of the consumers in the credit market.

Jan Esterhuizen of the IFP said it was suspicious that the ANC had tabled the bill just a few months before South Africans went to the polls. But Mantashe disagreed. “I want to correct Esterhuizen saying that we tabled the bill because we are going to the elections. We tabled it long before we knew there would be elections. We tabled it because our people are being retrenched, and they are given loans by loan sharks,” said Mantashe.

Fubbs said the bill had been introduced three years ago and that the committee had been working on it.

Dean Macpherson of the DA warned that the committee must be careful and not create a bill that would collapse the formal credit market.

He said that strong measures were needed to deal with consumer debt in South Africa and that the ANC should tread carefully. “The bill must not drive the poor to loan sharks or the informal credit market,” he said.

During discussions yesterday, the ANC made a concession in giving Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies power to intervene and introduce debt relief measures for consumers.

In its written submission, the National Treasury said it was concerned about this too.