SA government reviews film rebates to keep local industry competitive

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SA government reviews film rebates to keep local industry competitive --

Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:36

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London has developed a new incentive scheme to attract Hollywood film crews to the UK, which means Cape Town will have to up its game to attract foreign film productions.

According to an article that appeared on timeslive.co.za the new scheme, which will be effective in London from April, has resulted in the South African government reviewing its rebates to ensure that the local industry stays competitive.

The new UK incentives will include a 25% rebate on the first £20m (about R360m) spent, with a 20% rebate after that. This is likely to be changed to a flat rebate of 25% in 2015. Additionally, the minimum UK expenditure requirement has been revised from 25% to 10%. This means that only 10% of a film s total expenditure would need to be spent in the UK.

Sidwell Medupe, spokesperson of the Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI) said that they were aware of the UK implementing changes to its film incentive programmes, and because of that, the DTI was reviewing and amending the incentive programmes for foreign and South African productions.

Nico Dekker, CEO of Cape Town Film Studios, commented that the UK amendments included above-the-line costs such as actors and scriptwriters salaries, which does not apply to South Africa.

Currently, South African rebates allow for films to claim back 20% of their qualifying South African expenditure as a rebate if more than R12m is spent. This only applies if at least 50% of the principal photography is completed in South Africa over a minimum period of four weeks. If post-production is also done locally, the incentive increases to a maximum of 25%.

City of Cape Town s mayoral committee member responsible for tourism, marketing and events, Grant Pascoe, confirmed that the city had received 907 bookings for film shoots for the first 10 days of 2014, which include five for feature films and 19 for television series.

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