Brennon Marcano
Over R100-million in assets is up for grabs as the government decides the fate of funds accumulated by the Wool Board, which is due to merge with the National Wool Growers Association (NWGA).
Minister of Land Affairs and Agriculture Derek Hanekom has decided to postpone the planned merger until a special two-man investigative committee can fully evaluate the situation.
Says Wool Board chief executive officer Johan Gieselbach: “The best way to handle the money is for the two bodies to join immediately.”
The present scheme, promulgated in Government Notice No. R 1274 in July 1993, in terms of the Marketing Act No. 59 of 1968, states that should the Wool Board be dissolved, its assets would be distributed mainly to all wool producers who paid levies towards it.
But the Wool Board, with the NWGA, decided this was not the best route for the industry and so formulated a trust as announced in the Government Gazette during May this year.
The main objective of the trust, according to the gazette, was to manage the assets for the benefit of income beneficiaries such as organisations, associations, statutory bodies and institutions pursuing objectives under its set guidelines. Under these specifications, should the Wool Board be dissolved the assets would go into the trust.
But industry watchers argue that the trust was really set up to stop wool producers from getting their hands on the money.
Presently the R100-million, an accumulation of levies on wool producers and funds derived from investments, is generating income for the Wool Board as specified by the Marketing Act, which is soon to be amended.
“The NWGA wants to have its cake and eat it too; they want the minister to continue instituting levies, but don’t want him to intervene in management matters,” said Tracy Simbi, adviser to Hanekom.
According to the head of the NGWA, Theums Botha, it is simply trying to survive. “The government was not pleased with the idea of separate boards and eventually both boards would disappear in a couple of years,” he said.
Botha indicated the new Marketing Act, scheduled to go through parliament next month, would bring about “restructuring of both the Wool Board and the NWGA”. The merger between the two boards was scheduled to take place on October 1 this year, “but then the minister intervened”.