wasent speechcraft to be removed?
That hasn't been said to my knowledge, not to my knowledge, anyway. There may have been speculation that it has been removed, but that hasn't been confirmed.
My guess is that it is indeed speechcraft, after all, speechcraft is, as far as I can recall, the only skill that was in past games that ended in "aft", so it's either speechcraft, or a new skill, or at least a renamed one, and I can't really think of any other new skills I could see Skyrim having that could end in "aft". It has to be a skill that could fall under stealth as it's to the left of alchemy, I recall, and we know that's a stealth skill in Skyrim, and speechcraft was also a stealth skill in Morrowind and Oblivion. My guess is that the functionality of speechcraft and mercantile has been combined into one skill, with perks that can allow you to specialize in both.