South Africa lost its long\u2011held position as Africa’s largest vehicle producer to Morocco this year.<\/p>\n
Mkhululi Mlota, Chief Director of Automotives at the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, told lawmakers his department was conducting a comprehensive auto policy review, which he said has been a slow process, in parallel with addressing concerns raised on local production.<\/p>\n
“We’re looking specifically at how we can turn the tide on localisation. There are a number of proposals that have come from industry and other players on how we can do that,” Mlota said. “We should have a final proposal before the end of February.”<\/p>\n
CHANGES TO TAXES AND TARIFFS?<\/p>\n
Officials are considering tax reforms that would favour local vehicle production. They include changes to the ad valorem tax, or luxury tax, and reassessing hiking tariffs on imported vehicles, Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Zuko Godlimpi told lawmakers.<\/p>\n
He said engagements with the National Treasury will commence soon.<\/p>\n
South Africa’s 2018 automotive master plan set a goal of lifting local vehicle production to 1% of global output – about 1.4 million units – and to increase local content in South African assembled cars to 60% from below 40%. In 2025 local production rose to 602,302 units.<\/p>\n
However, imported vehicles continue to rise, with light vehicles accounting for 69.3% of national sales in 2025, reflecting an influx of affordable model imports, especially from India and China.<\/p>\n
Godlimpi said the government is talking to Chinese car manufacturers about setting up more manufacturing in South Africa. Last Friday, Nissan (7201.T), opens new tab<\/a> announced the sale of its manufacturing assets<\/a> in South Africa to the local arm of China’s Chery Automobile (9973.HK), opens new tab<\/a>.<\/p>\n Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; editing by Barbara Lewis<\/p>\n Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a> Nqobile is a Johannesburg-based reporter covering the South African retail, telecom and tech sectors. She has been a journalists for about 10 years. She joined Reuters in 2015 and has covered a variety of beats ranging from pharma, health to property and banking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa reviews auto policy after losing its position as Africa’s biggest automakerTax reforms are considered to support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[52],"tags":[488,2096,4590,5352,5353,685,686,5355,4893,4019,3814,1783,698,710,703,707,701,709,715,495,1787,1784,1788,1782,1853,711,4892,491,493,714,690,1405,695,24801,29170,29171,5349,3017,1399,131,26286,24803,5351,4960,26288,11568,1855],"class_list":["post-49537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-africa","tag-afr","tag-asia","tag-asxpac","tag-aut","tag-auto","tag-bact","tag-biz","tag-carm","tag-cn","tag-cprod","tag-cycs","tag-destabn","tag-destabx","tag-destafn","tag-destbnx","tag-destdnp","tag-deste","tag-destfun","tag-destozabsm","tag-destozatpm","tag-destpco","tag-destpsc","tag-destrbn","tag-destrnp","tag-destsf","tag-destucdptest","tag-easia","tag-emea","tag-emrg","tag-fin","tag-gen","tag-mtpix","tag-pol","tag-ratichina-strategy","tag-ratimanufacturing","tag-ratiproducts","tag-ratiregulatory-policy","tag-rulessouth-africa","tag-safr","tag-south-africa","tag-topicbusiness-tariffs","tag-topicrati-strategy","tag-topicrati-supply-chain-manufacturing","tag-trd","tag-trf","tag-xpand","tag-za"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nqobile](\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/resizer\/v2\/https%3A%2F%2Fauthor-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub%2Freuters%2F832243be-fa85-401b-9461-4c7fd7b71fc8.png?auth=7d618fcb4514e54a12a5ba25eaf3b5014021ed468d19257a937ee75498be8f9c&height=120&width=120&quality=80&smart=true\")
<\/a><\/p>\n