Sars would benefit if growing cannabis is legalised, says Tito Mboweni
Despite the hype, the large-scale commercialisation of dagga is not the right economic route to follow
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s tweet about pushing for it to be legal to grow cannabis - for the SA Revenue Service’s sake - is a step in the direction towards including small growers, although it is more likely they will remain in the informal economy. This is the view of GG Alcock, informal economy expert and author of Kasinomics and Kasinomic Revolution, who said: "We need a policy which is like fair trade coffee where companies like Starbucks invest in small farmers in Costa Rica and central Africa, supplying them with seed and plant stock and then buying the coffee from them. This should be the model we explore, investing in small farmers and then aggregating their crop via large commercial entities. ... the problem is that government models do not currently consider this type of model."
