top of page

24/7 National Hotline: 0860 163 272 | Email: info@neasa.co.za

STEEL INDUSTRY: Conducting your business with the DUTIES-SWORD hanging over your head

Sep 9, 2020

|

STEEL INDUSTRY

Conducting your business

WITH THE DUTIES-SWORD HANGING OVER YOUR HEAD

How does the import duties affect your business?
(click here to share your experience)
Below is another testimony from one of our members

 

Dear Gerhard

We are consumers of … tons (per month) of steel coated coils. We employ … people, … of whom work in our manufacturing facility.

Frankly, we are totally disappointed at our government’s handling of the duty situation with regards to AMSA and Safal.

AMSA always finds a way to stack the deck in their favor and our ministers are continuously outsmarted by them. When they had a great advantage in terms of iron ore pricing, they never passed this benefit to the downstream. When this was no longer the case they ran to government for protection.

When they made huge profits, they repatriated the monies to London (to their holding company) and when they lose money, they want protection.

They avoid paying competition board fines by making promises to invest and then they don’t invest. They promise no retrenchments and then they retrench.

They still export steel cheaper than they sell it on the domestic market and yet somehow government seems to believe every word that comes out of their mouth.

They even design the pricing basket to exclude the world’s biggest producers of steel, thereby making them compare prices with their own group owned steel mills predominantly, which is a ridiculous notion in itself.

They constantly can’t deliver, they claim certain imports as inferior products and then introduce those same products into the market that they used as arguments as being inferior. Government just doesn’t have the knowledge to call them out on all these actions because of the potential stick they place on government that they will pull out or retrench, or whatever their empty threats are.

Meanwhile, the downstream end users are battered into submission without ever receiving any benefit either from AMSA or government. No support, expensive labor under the MEIBC bargaining council and a constant threat of imminent death of our businesses. It is no wonder that no one invests in this country because if you are not a monopoly you don’t get any support from government and they stack the odds against you by supporting the monopolies who should be more efficient but its in their interests not to be.

Also this idea that the country could not survive without a primary steel sector is nonsense. The jobs lost by losing the primary steel sector will be more than doubled by the increased road and rail and port activities required to import the steel. Secondly, it would give government a real opportunity to spend on port and rail infrastructure instead of subsidization AMSA who will only repatriate profit out of the country when it makes profit, so where is the logic in any of that?

I beg our government to see the woods from the trees and let this monolith fall as it should have done decades ago. They do not serve South Africa’s best interests at all. They are no different to the Gupta’s tapping state resources for self-benefit by outsmarting the state.

Regards

 

 

 

We are all in this together.
Privileged and challenged to be South African.

POPULAR TOPICS

Filter items with Category
bottom of page