A call for further cuts in corporate taxes was among a number of proposals made by the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday — aimed, it said, at growing the economy and encouraging foreign direct investment.
Pierre Rabie, who speaks for the party on trade and industry, quoted the World Bank survey Doing Business 2008, which suggests that South Africa is underperforming in four key areas: the ease of cross-border trade, the ease with which workers can be employed, the ease of registration of business properties, and in terms of tax regulations.
Rabie told a media briefing in Parliament that the government has made the situation worse with a number of inappropriate policies, including import quotas on textiles, which make it difficult for local manufacturers to source quality raw materials at competitive prices, and the pursuit of land-ownership regulations that could stifle foreign investment in job-creating ventures such as game farms and other tourism-related projects.
He said that labour regulations need to be rebalanced to reflect prevailing trends among competitive countries. “The implementation of minimum wage levels needs to be decentralised,” he said, “to allow for a greater autonomy among certain sectors, especially among those that are labour-intensive.”
He added: “Fiscal policy needs to be revised to bring taxes on profits — that is, corporate tax and secondary tax on companies — in line with other more competitive countries among South Africa’s global economic peers — emerging and upper-middle-income countries.” — I-Net Bridge