Food shortage
Rico Suave
Along with a shortage of manpower our nation also suffers heavily from shortages in almost every consumer end product as well. We need to increase the population of South Africa in order to maintain a healthy workforce. In my opinion people will be more likely to live here if this country's markets can offer every quality of food at reasonable prices.
I propose to congress that we remove the import tax on grain completely so that our food companies will be able to produce food. Our domestic grain company Bakgat Farms has valiantly tried to supply grain but with lack of employees this task has proved to be overwhelming.
I hereby open this issue to debate during the voting procedure.
Long Live the nine provinces of South Africa!
Comments
I believe this should be a temporary option until more grain companies open in South Africa or our domestic supplier is able to meet demand. I have voted for this proposal with those things in mind. I do hope businesses still buy from the South African company before purchasing international goods. Relying solely on imports is not good for any nation.
I support this liberalization of trade, but I think it will only be helpful in the long run if, in the meantime, we work to strengthen our local grain companies, such as Grain Co and Bakgat Farms.
As a temporary measure perhaps, however I don't think more grain companies opening will help. Instead of spreading the work force even thinner, we need to strengthen our current grain companies.
So on the one hand this will obviously help our food market, but will our local grain companies be able to stay afloat with this sudden added competition added? In order to gain more workers they will have to raise their salaries, which means raising their prices, if food companies can get their grain cheaper from overseas it might mean the final death of local grain.
Then the goverment can support local industry when they are struggling with a Tax return. Really having high import taxes right now is starving us.
I respect the concerns voiced here. This measure will not invite any foreign companies to compete with our domestic companies visavi the workforce. And as I stated in the article: Our local grain companies should be a priority but considering the fact that they can't produce enough because of manpower shortage we must invite foreign grain.