Chicken import tariff explainer

These are the main types of tariffs or duties that apply to chicken imports into South Africa.

Our thanks to FairPlay for the clarification below.

These are the main types of tariffs or duties that apply to chicken imports into South Africa:

General (MFN or Most Favoured Nation) tariffs.

These are the highest tariff rates that WTO countries charge each other. South Africa applies these rates to chicken imports from all countries except the EU, the UK (formerly part of the EU) and SADC nations.

MFN tariffs in force at the moment are:

Whole frozen chicken – 82%
Frozen bone-in portions – 62%
Frozen boneless portions – 42%
Frozen carcasses – 31%
Frozen offal (heads, livers, feet) – 30%

The last tariff increase was in March 2020

Anti-dumping duties.

These apply to specific countries after applications by the SA Poultry Association (SAPA).

Anti-dumping duties are in place against

United States (R9.40/kg, renewed every 5 years since 2000)
United Kingdom (30.99%, renewed every 5 years since 2015)
Netherlands (22.81%) renewed every 5 years since 2015)
Germany (73.33% renewed every 5 years since 2015)

The last renewal of these tariffs was in 2021

In 2015, as a condition for the approval of the AGOA trade agreement, the US negotiated a quota of bone-in chicken portions which could be imported into South Africa free of anti-dumping duties.

The AGOA duty-free quota started at 65 000 tonnes in 2016, and rises annually. It is currently 72 290 tonnes. The AGOA quota expires in 2025.

Provisional anti-dumping duties

The SA poultry industry has applied for anti-dumping duties against Brazil and four EU countries – Denmark, Ireland, Spain and Poland).

The SA trade regulator, the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) is investigating the application and has not yet made a determination. The expectation has been that a decision would be announced in mid 2022.

However, in December 2021, the SA Revenue Service (SARS) announced the implementation of provisional anti-dumping duties against these 5 countries. These provisional anti-dumping duties expired on 14 June 2022.

The provisional anti-dumping duties in place until 14 June 2022 were:

Brazil 6% – 265.1% depending on the exporting company
Denmark 39% – 67.4% depending on the exporting company
Ireland 42% for all producers
Spain 3% – 85.8% depending on the exporting company
Poland 5% – 96.9% depending on the exporting company

(Another type of duty – safeguard duties – were in place against EU countries, but fell away in March 2022.)

Tariff restructuring

The poultry sector master plan, signed in 2019, included a section on combating illegal trade. Part of this was a recommendation that the tariff structure relating to chicken imports should be reviewed.

In March 2021, DTIC minister Ebrahim Patel instructed ITAC to conduct that review of the tariff structure. The review has apparently been completed, but Minister Patel has yet to announce any decision concerning the ITAC recommendations.

The SA poultry industry is hoping that the review will include the introduction of a reference or floor price for chicken imports. It believes this would go a long way towards eliminating illegal trade practices such as under-declaring the value of chicken imports or declaring imports under a different tariff heading which would result in lower or no import duties being paid.

Photo by Cisco Lin on Unsplash