Poultry row: SA sees quotas as solution

File photo: Sxc.hu

File photo: Sxc.hu

Published Mar 27, 2015

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Johannesburg - South Africa hopes poultry producers will agree on import quotas in the next few weeks, preventing their products from being blocked in the United States, Trade Minister Rob Davies said.

Local producers and their US counterparts have yet to reach a deal, Davies told reporters on Thursday in Johannesburg.

He will travel to the US next month.

South Africa could lose out on preferential access to the US for poultry through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or Agoa, if an agreement on quotas isn’t reached.

“They still haven’t found each other, but we have agreed on timetables to accelerate the work and reach an accommodation,” Davies said. “I think that if we do that, we’d be in a win-win situation.”

South Africa offered to raise the annual tonnage allowable free of anti-dumping duties by 50 percent for the US, Johannesburg-based Business Day newspaper reported on March 11. This was rejected by American producers at a meeting in Washington.

If South Africa loses preferential access to the US through Agoa, then US poultry won’t access the South African market, so there “will be other losses as well and losses relate to the credibility of Agoa”, Davies said.

Bloomberg

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