COPE Youth Movement welcomes the South African Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee announcement of the stable repurchase rate at 5% as well as the prime lending rate therefore also remaining at 8.5% on September 19, 2013.
It is testimonial that the rates have been stable ever since the National Credit Act was enacted in 2005, to prohibit certain unfair credit and credit-marketing practices; thus promoting responsible credit granting and use and for that purpose to prohibit reckless credit granting.
But there are still credit providers that are charging exorbitant lending rates both on secured and unsecured credit; it is that reason the COPEYM demands that the National Credit Regulator investigates and penalize those culprits who are engineering poverty by inflating interest rates, exploiting financially struggling working class in favour of high profit margins to benefit the ruling class.
Findings by the Competition Commission have proven that collusive tendering by construction cartels and price fixing by manufacturing cartels have contributed to the rising inflation; COPEYM therefore calls for the establishment of the National Pricing Regulator, similar to the National Credit Regulator, to legislate a regulatory policy framework to regulate pricing across the commercial sector from food, automobile, housing, legal, healthcare, telecommunications and so on.
