BusinessLive reports that a hike in the safeguard duty on bone-in chicken imports from the EU appears to be a likely outcome of a high-level meeting between the government, business and labour on Tuesday.  

The meeting of about 40 representatives of various government departments, industry, trade unions and state entities decided to set up a joint task team to address the short, medium and long-term challenges facing the poultry industry, including devising ways to ward off the imminent retrenchments and plant closures by producers.  Another outcome of the meeting was that the government would negotiate with chicken producers such as RCL Foods to consider ways to avoid plant closures and retrenchments.  RCL plans to retrench 1,355 workers at the end of January.  An interdepartmental government task team has been working on a rescue plan for the industry since mid-November and has accumulated a body of data on the structure of the industry, import penetration, cost drivers, competitiveness and transformation.

• Read this report by Linda Ensor in full at BusinessLive

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