Tag: import duty

The vidcast dives into the real cost of education. We dig into the costs associated with various stages of the educational journey and reflect on both public and private educational costs. We focus on the value of the education and whether or not the cost justifies the potential return.

E-commerce, e-tail or online shopping – whatever you call it, its adoption among South Africans has almost reached ubiquity, sitting steady at 6% of the total retail pie (on and offline purchasing), with 86% of online consumers (49% of which have a household income of less than R10,000.00 per month) reporting that they have purchased online. This is according to the sixth annual South African Customer Experience Report.

There’s an old saying "there are two sides to every story". And the current battle over the question of chicken import duties and tariff rebates serves as a case in point. While the issue may be complex, there is a potentially simple solution: extend the rebate for those products that are critical for lower income families and manufacturing, where they add the greatest value for local businesses and consumers.

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) announced that it will impose a 45% import tax on goods that cost R500 or less, imported from China through online retailers such as Shein and Temu. Unions and businesses praise this as a ‘levelling of the playing field’, but for the consumer it simply translates to higher prices.

While electric vehicles (EVs) have been globally touted as the future of road travel – the replacement to the internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that we have been driving for over 100 years – the very mention of the subject raises polarising opinions, especially in the South African market.

Every South African is currently faced with the ongoing negative effects of rolling electricity blackouts, which Government euphemistically refers to as “load shedding”. It affects our businesses, our homes, our livelihoods, our safety and our faith in the future of our country.

China’s transition towards 'common prosperity' will create some short to medium-term headwinds to the growth in luxury goods sales, but these should be more than offset by long-term, structural growth in the sector driven by an expanding middle-income cohort in China.

While the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on business and industrial landscapes, both locally and abroad, one of the industries that has had to adapt or die quickly is the automotive industry, in all its facets. This has meant rethinking the way it does business and what stimulus packages would help to get it firing on all cylinders again.