Brigitte Weidlich
30 June 2009
SHEEP farmers and some abattoirs have at last cleared the remaining obstacles to an N$40 export levy per live sheep exported in order to replace the 6:1 export ratio set up by Government about three years ago, which impacted negatively on sheep production.
Three abattoirs refused to accept this change - already agreed in February - and said they also do not believe that the Meat Board should manage the introduction, collections and oversight of the levy.
"The Technical Committee about the future of marketing of sheep met last Thursday and was chaired by Annascy Mwanyangapo, Director of International Trade at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, to mainly remove few technical aspects in order to continue with the implementation of the agreement which was reached on February 13 2009," the NAU said in its weekly newsletter.
This agreement contains the replacement of the current 6:1 scheme with a disincentive of N$40 per head of each sheep exported.
The agreement also makes provision for the monitoring of the marketing system against the background of the average throughput of local abattoirs and the throughput of a single export abattoir measured against such abattoir's performance and price differentiation.
Sakkie Coetzee, the CEO of the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU), told The Namibian yesterday that Mwanyangapo would send a submission to Cabinet on the outcome of last week's meeting. "Cabinet will now have make the final decision," Coetzee said.
"There will be no more meetings on this topic and those abattoirs which disagree are in the minority."
Three of the four small-stock export abattoirs, Farmers' Meat Market, Brukkaros Abattoir at Keetmanshoop and the Aranos Abattoir, expressed doubt about the capacity of the Meat Board to implement the scheme.
These abattoirs were requested to substantiate their concerns by providing proof.
"The Meatco/Namco group however dissociated themselves from this point of view," the NAU newsletter said.
Originally it was agreed that the system will be implemented by the Meat Board and the monitoring will be done by a technical committee consisting of producers, abattoir representatives and the Meat Board.
After deliberations by these three abattoirs, they however insisted that the Meat Board must be replaced as implementing agent by another independent and objective organisation, which could also include Government.
The objections of three abattoirs were rejected by the majority at last week's meeting and were seen as "as a further delaying tactic" to keep the status of the small-stock marketing scheme unchanged, the NAU newsletter read.
Kay-Dieter Rumpf, chairman of the Livestock Producers' Organisation, and Sakkie Coetzee, CEO of NAU, on behalf of the producers, "again emphasised that the current small-stock marketing scheme and the dragging of the implementation of an alternative, harms the small-stock industry and that numerous sheep farmers are already switching to alternative production systems. Statistics based on a six-yearly average give clear indications that sheep production in Namibia is declining."
Government imposed an export ratio three years ago. For every live sheep exported to South African abattoirs, six should be slaughtered in Namibia.
Farmers complained that they got lower prices for their sheep locally than in South Africa and that some local abattoirs could not cope with the high number of sheep sent for slaughter.
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