Cape Town - Cane growers are demanding that Treasury accounts to Parliament “transparently” with details on the sugar tax and a planned levy increase set to kick in on April 1.
SA Canegrowers has written to Parliament’s standing committee on finance chairperson Joseph Maswanganyi, demanding that the committee hold Treasury to account over its policy-making regarding the health promotion levy.
This after the Treasury “failed” to respond to a Promotion of Access to Information Act request for Treasury to give cane growers the reasoning behind the implementation and the planned increase of the levy.
SA Canegrowers chairperson Andrew Russell said the organisation had also approached Treasury Minister Enoch Godongwana in its bid to save jobs and an industry that was at risk.
He said the growers approached Parliament because they want Treasury “to deal transparently with the sugar industry”.
A Treasury spokesperson told the Cape Argus that they would respond to the matter after the Budget announcement as they were saddled with preparations for Godongwana’s speech.
Maswanganyi’s office hadn’t responded at the time of writing.
Russell said: “The sugar industry has struggled for close to five years under the yoke of an unsubstantiated ‘health’ intervention with no evidence whatsoever of its effectiveness,” Russell said.
“However, there is ample evidence regarding how the continued implementation of the levy threatens the future sustainability of the industry and the 1 million livelihoods it supports.”
He cited the SA Sugar Association’s recently released report which shows that upcoming levy increase could shed more than 6 000 industry jobs and jeopardise the businesses of about 3 000 small-scale growers.
Russell said more than 16 000 jobs and R2 billion have already been lost because of the levy in the year that the levy was implemented, and comes against the the backdrop of an SA Canegrowers’ report that predicted that growers stood to lose more than R700 million in 2023 due to stages 4 and 6 of load shedding.
Russell said the levy increase would be “unconscionable”.
He said: “As the sugar industry, like much of the national economy, suffers the effects of crippling load shedding, high inflation, and deteriorating infrastructure exacerbated by recurring floods, with the additional hardship occasioned by a crisis in the milling industry, maintaining the health promotion levy was not sustainable.”