Today the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) addressed the Parliamentary Select and Standing Committee on Finance where it called for National Treasury to urgently re-introduce the expansion of the list of zero-rated basic food items in the draft tax legislation expected to be shortly published for public comment. In a country facing food insecurity, Neo Momodu, CGCSA Executive Legal, Regulatory & Stakeholder Engagement, submitted that expanding the list of zero-rated food products, poor households will be in a position to afford more healthy and nutritious food that would potentially otherwise have been beyond their means. She says while
Read More

The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) welcomes plans by the government to strengthen the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to enable it to fight the scourge of illicit trade in tobacco, alcohol and other areas. In his budget speech statement, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana stated an additional allocation will be made to SARS will be used to improve modernisation as well as respond to the growing problem of illicit trade. “The minister has correctly identified the need for a more robust approach to fighting illicit trade, an issue that was further highlighted at the CGCSA security seminar held
Read More

The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) has welcomed with caution, the decision by National Treasury to withdraw the planned 0.5 percentage point increase in VAT which was due to be effective from 1 May 2025 saying it will go a long way to ease the financial burden on particularly poor households. CGCSA CEO Zinhle Tyikwe says while retailers had been working hard to exhaust best efforts to apply the VAT increase by ensuring systems compliance, shelf price labelling of each item and notification of consumers, to mention a few, the compliance readiness came at huge costs, which costs
Read More

Co-chairman of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) Gareth Ackerman today called for closer collaboration between business and the government of national unity (GNU) to address the country’s low economic growth cycle and infrastructure challenges. Speaking at the annual summit of the CGCSA, Ackerman said a capable government that is open to working with the private sector will be critical to growing the economy which he noted has hardly grown during the past decade. “We have a long way to go and the last decade or more we have regressed economically and growth has averaged about 2%, yet
Read More

GS1 South Africa t/a Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) has partnered with Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) to raise awareness on food safety and quality at a workshop held today in Mangaung, Bloemfontein. Also participating in the workshop was the Free State Department of Economic, Small Business Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (DESTEA) and Mangaung Metro. The workshop is aligned with the World Consumer Day which is celebrated annually on 15 March, to raise awareness about consumer rights to access information on the quality, purity, price and standard of goods and service they purchase. CGCSA used the workshop
Read More

The Johannesburg High Court has reviewed and set aside the decision to seize meat analogue products from retail outlets. The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) was forced to urgently seek an interdict to stop the assignee the Food Safety Agency (FSA) from seizing meat analogue products from the shelves of retailers around the country, which it successfully did pending the outcome of the review of the decision. The matter related to the treatment of meat analogue products (being products which approximate the aesthetic qualities of meat, but which are made from non-meat ingredients) by the FSA, the Executive
Read More

The Chief Executive of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) Zinhle Tyikwe has called for collaboration between the government, organised business and other stakeholders to overcome the country’s economic challenges. Speaking at the CGCSA’s annual summit in Sandton, Tyikwe said the low economic growth in South Africa has been worsened by load shedding at a time when the country was beginning to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, which severely disrupted social and economic life. The theme of this year’s summit is “Reshaping the Future Together: Prepare, Build, Grow & Sustain”. “The CGCSA believes in collaboration with stakeholders to
Read More

The co-chairman of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) Gareth Ackerman today said the private sector cannot longer wait for government to solve the country’s worsening infrastructure crisis because the state is failing to deliver. Addressing the annual summit of the CGCSA in Sandton, Ackerman said businesses will have to provide solutions than wait for the government to step in. Ackerman questioned why the government is not dealing with alleged corruption at Eskom where there have been allegations of the utility being supplied with low quality coal for its power stations. “We need to ask ourselves what is going
Read More

The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) has criticised the decision by the government to increase the sugar levy by 2.31 cents per gram saying it will result in unintended consequences of job losses and further contribute to many sustainable farmers losing their livelihoods. CGCSA was responding to the announcement by the Minister of Finance that the government has after three years of no changes, decided to increase the health promotion levy on sugar sweetened beverages. The CGCSA said there was no consultation prior to the decision to increase the levy, neither was there sufficient consultation when the government
Read More