[First it was medicine… now books. The ANC really seems to love this socialist price-control nonsense. The HORROR of it all is… Good Lord… businesses that sell books… might MAKE A PROFIT!!! Oh NO!! So, we need strict price controls. They need a slap to the side of the head. If there were no profits then there’d be no business… But in their communist minds the worst EVIL… is making a buck!!!

As an author, I have some experience with books, and there is a pretty standard markup of all books, virtually worldwide. The “excessive profiteering” they are looking for doesn’t exist. Jan]

Cape Town – Any campaign to lower the cost of books should look at their whole pricing structure and not just VAT, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Thursday.

She was speaking at the launch, at Cape Town’s Red Cross Children’s Hospital, of the annual Readathon national literacy campaign.

Asked whether she supported calls for VAT on books to be scrapped, Pandor told journalists she liked to start “where things begin”, which was the cost of books and the markups added by those who were selling them.

“Is the markup equivalent to VAT, or might it be double the VAT?” she asked.

“Perhaps from the production side we may need to look at pricing at that level and the VAT may be something we’re chasing which might be a bit of a phantom…

“There are businesses that are selling books and I would be interested in what sort of markups they’re making.”

She said a novel she could buy for (194)Â(163)£5 in London cost R189 in South Africa, rather than the R60-odd of a direct exchange rate conversion.

“I’m not sure if it’s VAT or something else,” she said. “This is why I’m saying I think a greater deliberation is needed on the whole price structure.”

In his Budget speech in February, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said, with “some personal regret”, scrapping book VAT meant benefits largely for higher income households and could not be justified.

Reading opens the mind

Earlier on Thursday, Pandor visited wards in Red Cross, distributing books to children in their beds, and reading part of a story to 14-year-old liver and kidney transplant patient Rejoice Motshweneng of Johannesburg.

She told the children reading was important for developing not only language, but knowledge in a range of areas.

“If you don’t read, your ideas are closed,” she said.

“We will try to get as many books as possible into our schools and to develop a culture of reading in South Africa.”

She said people who could read were empowered, and enabled to engage with society and its range of challenges.

The Readathon, organised by Read Educational Trust, is in its 17th year, and reaches 26 000 schools across the country, who will be receiving packages containing posters and a handbook with monthly classroom and extramural activities.

The six months of activities climax on International Literacy day on September 8.

Edited by Tisha Steyn

Source: News24.Com
URL: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/New…/p>