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India-South Africa
South Africa's high import duties on clothing are a safeguard to protect local manufacturers and cannot be reduced for India, a senior government official said on Monday. Speaking to a gathering of business people from both the countries, Jayawant Irkhede, the Director of Leather and Footwear in the Department of Trade, Industry and Competetion, said that the tariffs are set by the World Trade Organisation. This is the most common question I am asked whenever I meet Indian businesses wanting to export to South Africa, Irkhede said at the meet aimed at promoting business between the two countries. The international partners ask us whether we can reduce the import duties, like the 40 per cent -45 per cent duty on clothing; 30 per cent on shoes and 22 per cent on fabric. It is important to understand that these duties are not given by the South African government. These are the same tariffs provided by the World Trade Organisation (WTO)," he said. He said that it was difficult for the
The translocation of 12 cheetahs to India from South Africa on Saturday could be made possible because of changed eco laws after Nelson Mandela was elected president following 27 years as a political prisoner of the white minority apartheid government. Before that, India had ended all relations with South Africa for nearly four decades as it led the international fight against apartheid. In South Africa, the transition to democracy had substantial implications for wild cheetah conservation. The Game Theft Act (No. 105 of 1991) was responsible for a major change in land use from agriculture to ecotourism," the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (DFFE) said in a statement on Saturday. Since 1994 (when Mandela was installed as President) cheetahs have been reintroduced into 63 newly established game reserves that currently support a combined metapopulation of 460 individuals, it said. The Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment has approved the expor
India has signed an agreement with South Africa to translocate 12 cheetahs to the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, a senior official in the Union Environment Ministry said on Friday. The pact was signed last week and seven male and five female cheetahs are expected to reach Kuno by February 15, the official said. The 12 South African cheetahs have been in quarantine for more than six months and were expected to reach Kuno this month but the transfer was delayed as "some processes in South Africa took some time", the official said on condition of anonymity. Cheetah is the only large carnivore that got completely wiped out from India due to over-hunting and habitat loss. The last cheetah died in Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947 and the species was declared extinct in 1952. Under the Cheetah reintroduction programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released the first batch of eight eight spotted felines - five females and three males - from Namibia into a ...
Indian citizens, especially business leaders, who have been complaining for the past few years about long delays in securing visas for South Africa, may have to wait longer as the government had admitted that its full visa waiting list would only be cleared by the end of June 2024. While Indian missions grant tourist and business e-visas to South Africans within a week, there is no reciprocal facility for Indian citizens at South African missions in India. But there is some hope that businesses and academia might be prioritised after a decision, which centralised all visa issues exclusively to the Home Affairs head office in Pretoria, was revoked recently. The current backlog across all visa categories is 56,543. The department envisages to have cleared the current backlog by June 2024 for all categories of visas, Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said last week in response to a question from an opposition MP. The average response time varies for different visa categories,
As business gathers steam after over two-year COVID-19 lull, an event to be held here next month will shift the focus back on improving the trade relations between South Africa and India, especially in the small and medium business enterprise sectors. Organised jointly by the Consulate General of India, Johannesburg in association with leading South African bank Nedbank and networking company Yobuning, the event, to be held on October 14 and titled India-South Africa: Growing Together', will bring together representatives of many companies in South Africa and local entrepreneurs. Announcing the event here on Thursday, India's Consul General in Johannesburg Anju Ranjan said the focus would be not only on doing more business with India but also on the Indian companies to help their South African counterparts grow, which would then benefit both countries. The event is aimed at business-to-business networking and to discuss opportunities and challenges in the key sectors of the two ...