LETTER: Makgetla is wrong about food prices and tariff formulation
With rising food prices at the core of policy discourse, it is important to understand what feeds into the complex issue, write Tinashe Kapuya and Wandile Sihlobo
The issue of rising food prices has been at the core of policy discourse for some time, particularly, over the past year when the country experienced a perfect storm of a severe drought, and a volatile and depreciating rand. SA became a net importer of staple grains — such as maize and wheat; we imported almost a third of our annual maize consumption and half of our wheat. The high level of staple grain imports exposed the market to the exchange rate shocks, which reinforced the impact of rising food prices. As food security is an issue of national interest, all citizens are naturally inclined to understand the fundamental drivers of the significant price increases we have witnessed so far. But in our desire to understand the subject matter, it remains important to appreciate the complexity of food markets, particularly as they relate to price discovery and tariff formulation. In that spirit, we want to address the fundamental flaws of Neva Makgetla’s argument contained in a recent ...
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