Pretoria – The International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa is to urgently investigate measures to help support the metals industry which, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, faces several serious problems due to increased global demand for raw materials and a significant price increase for all main inputs into the sector, the Trade, Industry, and Competition Department said.
"I have therefore issued a trade policy directive to ITAC to urgently investigate the market conditions around the demand-supply imbalance in the scrap metal industry as a result of Covid-19. "Our long-term plan for the industry, which was announced by the minister of finance during his budget speech in 2019 and which is widely agreed upon within the sector, is to introduce an export tax on scrap metal as soon as possible.
The scrap metal industry, in turn, was of critical importance as a supplier of raw material into primary and secondary metal production.