Agricultural organisation BerriesZA said Friday it has written to key National Ministers and the Transnet Executive to request their urgent intervention in the strike action that started Thursday and which resulted in the ports authority declaring a force majeure across all South African ports.
The organisation said the open-ended strike has occurred during the peak of the berry export season, which meant that even a single day of ports not operating will have a significant knock-on effect on the entire berry value chain thereby putting 30 000 livelihoods who depended on this industry at risk and compromised millions of rand in export revenue.
BerriesZA said the latest strike action also followed the industry having been severely impacted by ongoing operational issues at the country’s ports as a result of aging and out of service infrastructure, inefficient systems and staff shortages.
It said delayed shipments, as a result of the poor port performance, has affected the quality of berries that reached international markets, resulting in product rejection rates from receiving clients skyrocketing to an unprecedented quarter of a billion rand last year.
Compounding this problem, BerriesZA said there had been a surge in input costs faced by farmers including a hike in fertilizer and fuel prices as well as soaring freight rates.
As a result, over a third of local berry producers were said to be currently not profitable, which meant their survival and the livelihoods they support were under severe threat.
According to the organisation, the latest strike action could be the final nail in the coffin for berry farmers who fill a critical gap in the labour sector, due to their harvest season running from September to November before the early stone fruit and table grape harvest season commenced
It also said that Transnet has been engaging with Industry over the past three days with regard to their negotiations with United National Transport Union (UNTU) and the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union (SATAWU), and reassured that the situation was under control.
"However UNTU and SATAWU”s decision to embark on a strike and Transnet declaring a force majeure in the past 24 hours clearly shows that the ports authority does not have a handle on the situation, inexplicably providing no indication of when this current impasse will end or detailed contingency plans."
BerriesZA said while it has written to the Transnet Executive requesting a meeting to discuss what specific contingency plans could be put in place to ensure the continued movement of berries through the ports, it has also written to Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan, Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Thoko Didiza and Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Ebrahim Patel requesting their urgent intervention to mitigate the impact of the current strike and to ensure the current wage increase dispute was resolved as soon as possible.
It said this was absolutely critical over the short-term to safeguard the profitability and sustainability of hundreds of berry farmers and the jobs they sustained as well as the long-term growth of the industry, which was expected to contribute at least R3 billion in export revenue to the local economy this season. "The situation is untenable, and unless urgent action is taken government will have to explain to hundreds of people why they do not have a job as a result of their inaction."
This week, Bobby Madhav, FNB Head of Trade & Structured Trade and Commodity Finance said that South Africa’s trade surplus decreased to R7.2bn in August this year compared to the surplus of R24.8bn for the previous month. The surplus was lower than market expectations of R23.7bn and the second lowest surplus since May 2020.
He said the smaller surplus was the result of a decrease in exports of 1% month-on-month and a sizable increase of 10.4% in imports compared to the previous month.
The decline in exports came mainly on the back of substantial lower exports of precious metals and stones of R5.4bn (-15%); base metals of R2.0bn (-11%) and chemical products of R1.5bn (-13%).
Madhav said various local developments weighed down on the outlook for trade going forward. Inflationary pressures led the Reserve Bank to increase its repo rate by 75 basis-points, employment data indicated that formal employment declined, and business confidence remains under pressure.
"However, it is the record-breaking incidences of load-shedding experienced during September that will have the greatest impact on trade prospects for the coming months. Not only was the load-shedding continuous (and still in place at the writing of this piece), but it also happened at generally higher stages. Manufacturers and miners struggle to maintain production in these conditions, hurting not only these industries, but the economy in general," Madhav said.
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