South Africa: Poultry Task Team Making Headway

The Department of Trade and Industry

Pretoria — The Department of Trade and Industry (dti) says the task team set up to deal with challenges in the domestic poultry industry has made progress since its inception.

"The task team established by the South African government to deal with the crisis in the domestic poultry industry has secured significant progress across a number of work streams to develop a common response to the complex challenges facing the domestic industry," the dti said on Friday.

Some poultry producers have announced major retrenchment plans amid concerns of the import rate of poultry products from other countries.

The dti said once the necessary technical work has been completed for the short-term interventions, the task team will submit for final ratification a set of short-term and shared interventions.

"These proposals will be submitted to the Ministers concerned and the broader leadership of business and labour involved in the poultry sector," said the dti.

In the meantime, government has appealed to industry to do all it can to prevent any plant closures and retrenchments until such a time that support measures can be instituted.

The task team comprises representatives of the Departments of Trade and Industry, Economic Development and Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, the Industrial Development Corporation, Poultry South Africa and representatives of poultry producers. Labour is represented on the task team by the leadership of the Food and Allied Workers Union.

The work streams established by the task team to process a range of possible short and longer-term interventions include trade measures, health and quality issues, competitiveness, industry growth and transformation, and industrial financing, incentives and demand side interventions.