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Cape Town - The Department of Trade and Industry
is cross with the wine producer's organisation, Wines of South Africa (Wosa), for claiming that the department is not supporting them in their efforts to sell into the American market.
In their protest published last Wednesday, Wosa blamed the credit crunch for the department's change of focus away from sales to developed countries.
"Nonsense" says the department. In a statement issued at the weekend it said it "wishes to dismiss media reports attributed to Wosa". The department's agro-processing director Tshifhiwa Madima said the decision was taken well before the crunch came, and it was taken because the emerging markets of Brazil, China and India were growing much faster than traditional
markets, and it was important to put more energy there to maximise opportunities presented.
In any case the department said, it has not decreased its funding to the wine industry. It supported the Cape Wine exhibition last year with R2.3m, and paid R700 000 to bring 22 American foreign buyers here.
Christiaan Saaiman, director of export promotion, said that the only cutback in wine support was the decision not to host a pavilion at a national exhibition in the US. But he insisted that individual wine producers could still qualify for help to participate in the event.
- I-Net Bridge