When you see a fork in the road, take it

Trade is the end of the process of dreaming, investing, creating jobs and making things other people want to buy. In South Africa though the obvious seldom has right of way. In this episode of Podcasts from the Edge, South Africa's leading trade consultant, Donald MacKay, head of XA Global Trade Advisors, explains to Peter Bruce just how much delays in making decisions about the imposition of duties or the granting of relief from them is costing local business. Out in rural Eastern Cape, where no-one can hear you scream, MacKay stumbles across the cruel story of the Matador Slagtery, in Somerset East, the town's biggest employer, brought to its knees because officials at the department of trade, industry and competition are 17 months late in compensating the company for duties in posed on imported product otherwise unavailable in the country.