In order to address the rating inequities faced by owners of agricultural properties with non-annual growing crops such as forestry, plantations, sugar cane, orchards, and vineyards, if the value of such rooted crops producing trading output is included in the definition of market value, exclusions of such agricultural and ancillary farm improvements from such assessment of market value in the National Rating Bill should be drafted on the lines of the Cape Ordinance provisions.

Such provisions have effectively excluded the additional value of such growing crops and ancillary farm improvements from the assessment of value for rating purposes for decades in the Cape.

Providing that the Act is drafted so as to exclude the assessment of value of such excluded growing crops and ancillary farm improvements, the effect of such exclusions would simplify the cost of conducting valuations in rural areas of the country to a major degree, broadly limiting the assessment of improved value in the case of agricultural property to the farmhouse and the land components, in terms of their component utilisation potential, omitting the growing crops and the farm improvements from such assessment.

With far fewer South African valuers practicing in the rural sector, the countrywide assessment of improved value is likely to create Valuation Roll production problems in such rural areas, and the simplification of valuation assessment in such areas is likely to alleviate this situation to a major degree.

The State should also consider the merits of setting up public sector Valuation Departments to cover the District Council Areas in each Province, providing the opportunity of ongoing National Rating Bill improved value assessment for a central point.

Such a Department would have the advantage of being able to tap into GIS information, aerial photography etc, which information may not be readily available on a cost effective basis to individual valuers operating in the rural sector competing for such work.

As an example, in Queensland, Australia, the State Valuation Department performs rural valuation assessment across the State, and the Cape Provincial Administration Valuation Department performed the same function within the old Cape Divisional Council Areas.

Without such exclusions, the assessment of value could well involve valuers on each side, and the Valuation Boards, in extensive and time consuming disputes over the profit and loss accounts of farming operations, instead of restricting the assessment to the capital value of the asset, after taking into account the proposed exclusions.

In very many cases, Municipalities can be expected to grant major rebates to agricultural properties, in view of the lack of service provision in the rural areas as compared with the urban cores of such areas.

In Cape Town for example bona fide agricultural properties have been granted an 80% rebate for 2002 / 3002.

The justification for the increased Municipal costs of establishing agricultural improved value assessment without exclusion is therefore questioned, the basis of such improved value and the quantum of the agricultural rebate to be granted being interrelated.