Potatoes SA CEO, Andre Jooste, says the tariff was gazetted by the government in October.

“Basically what it means is we will have tariffs against the import of frozen chips from Belgium – the tariff levied will be approximately 30%.

“There will also be tariffs imposed against frozen imports from the Netherlands. This tariff will be just above 16%.”

He says these are general country tariffs. He says certain companies within these countries are exempted from the tariff as investigations found they are not dumping products in SA.

“The reason for these anti-dumping tariffs is because of investigations by Itac – that is the International Trade Administration Commission – where they investigated the dumping of frozen chips into South Africa.

“Now dumping basically means that you are selling products into another country at a lower price than it actually cost to produce that product. It creates an unfair playing field for your local companies.”

- OFM News