WHEAT FORUM TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY VIA LEVIES

 NaijaAgroNet:

The Wheat forum, currently sent a request to the South African Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC), on behalf of the directly affected groups in the winter cereal industry, for the introduction and promulgation of the following statutory levies (VAT excluded), to be collected and administered by the Winter Cereal Trust, for a period of four years reports NaijaAgroNet.

This is line with the current statutory measure regarding levies on winter cereal as promulgated by Government Notice No. 38201 of 11 November 2014, which currently amounts to R17/ton (excl VAT), which will expire on 30 September 2016.

The proposed levies will be utilised for the funding of information, quality and grading, transformation, administration, capacity building, research, the Supply and Demand Estimates Committee, and pre-breeding research as opposed to seed breeding which the soon to expire levy was used for. This will result in lower amount levied.

It was gathered by NaijaAgroNet that the Wheat Forum could not reach consensus on the final amount, manner of collection and the specific utilisation of a seed breeding levy which led to industry stakeholders submitting two alternative applications for statutory levies aimed at seed breeding and technology for wheat and barley, which will be published for comments at a later stage.

It was further gathered by NaijaAgroNet that the levy funds will partly compensate for the diminished funds for research and also to make provision for new research projects to be funded.

Okoli Vincent/GEE

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