“MORE VEHICLE parts suppliers leaving SA” (October 7) should alert all of us to what is really taking place in South Africa today. With our onerous labour legislation and increased bottom line labour costs, the business community is searching for alternatives. Firstly, businesses are mechanising, investing elsewhere and curtailing their product range.
Secondly, and more dangerously for us in South Africa, they are looking to foreign jurisdictions that can accommodate the quest to bring down the cost of doing business. All this when the country is deeply involved in the minimum wage debate. When the local parts suppliers leave South Africa, it should make the unions sit up and take notice that their membership is dropping at an incredible rate.
Furthermore, this story must be read in conjunction with another in Business Report that day: “SA farmers make a success of move into continent”. Once again this industry is being decimated.
We hear that South African farmers (some of our best) are now farming in 42 African states. Our neighbouring African states are falling over themselves to attract our highly skilled and productive farming community.
We are bringing in bananas from Mozambique into KwaZulu-Natal – how ridiculous is this!
Our government is failing the business community and it must remember that the business community will consider relocating out of South Africa as one of the last measures when faced with a plethora of labour laws and rising costs. This move has to be brought to the attention of the voting public before it is too late.
Michael Bagraim
Cape Town