Parliamentary Editor

CAPE TOWN Organised agriculture has welcomed changes made to the Property Rates Bill which go a long way to addressing some of the concerns raised by farmers.

The bill, which has been in the parliamentary system for about 200 hours of consideration, originally alarmed farmers and many predicted in public hearings that the agricultural sector would be substantially harmed.

The key clause in the bill, section 3, now says that municipalities must, when considering its rating policy for agricultural land, take into account the services enjoyed by farms.

The beneficiaries of land reform programmes will be exempted from paying rates for a 10- year period following the return of their land.

Many submissions to the committee said that while farmers would have to pay rates, they enjoyed none of the services that town dwellers enjoyed such as water and sewerage.

Municipalities will also have to consider the contribution made by agriculture to the local economy and the extent to which agriculture assists with service delivery and development obligations when setting its rates policy.

Other sectors, such as South African National Parks and religious organisations, also had some of their problems addressed by the provincial and local government committee.

AgriSA chief economist Johan Pienaar thanked African National Congress committee chairman Yunus Carrim yesterday for the way in which he had consulted and engaged with stakeholders during the marathon processing of the bill.

However, Carrim warned that organised agriculture had won significant concessions made on the bill and should not push too hard for more.

Pienaar said that one issue still of concern to the farming community was that game farming was not among the exclusions in the bill.

He said that he was happy that the situation with game farmers should be left up to the municipalities concerned.

Ben Dorfling, of the South African Local Government Association, said game farmers were not excluded because very few added anything to the national food basket. Those that did could approach their local council for consideration of their position.

The committee heard that there were many absentee game farmers who did not deserve to be placed in the same category as farmers who lived upon what they produced and who contributed to the food security of the nation.

Carrim said game farmers' individual cases would have to be dealt with on merit.

Carrim said that one major decision still remained for the committee and that was to decide whether or not public service infrastructure should be subject to municipal rates. He said this question was a political one which would have to be resolved.

Issues influencing the decision would be whether the infrastructure was still controlled by the state or whether it was in private hands such as Telkom.

He pointed out that all government departments now paid property rates to the municipalities in which they fell.

"The question is, why exclude public service infrastructure when government departments pay rates; why should the department of communications pay rates and Telkom not?"

Feb 04 2004 07:13:48:000AM Wyndham Hartley Business Day 1st Edition