Dealing with Customs and Excise has become easier for clearing agents, but more needs to be done to smooth the f low of cargo, according to Clifford Evans, customs liaison manager at Berry & Donaldson and member of the South Western Cape committee of the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Sa af f ) and head of various government agency portfolios.“In general, customs has been pretty good over the last year or two. They take what we say into account much more than what they used to a couple of years ago,” he told Freight News.An example is the inconsistent classification of vessel waste and processes at the different ports. “Sars rewrote the policy document with input from the industry, and the waste disposal process has been finalised.”There are regular information-sharing meetings with the different customs and Sars structures, which provide the industry with the opportunity to make submissions. Transparency does not, however, extend to information about projects which seem to have stalled.“Customs, and Sars in general, have started a lot of things which have lost traction. An example is the national single window customs system. It is two years down the line and they’re still testing. “So that raises the question of whether they initiated the pilot correctly and whether they consulted outside of Sars to help them with this product.”Many countries, including neighbouring Mozambique, have successfully implemented single windows, he said.A worry is that Sars has plans to expand the system from the current Plant Inspector portal to include Port Health.“I think that’s going to be a complete disaster, which will create delays and problems. The number of shipments involving Plant Inspector is minimal compared to the thousands that need to be checked by Port Health.”Another concern is the delay in publishing new customs acts, which were drafted in 2014.“Sars keeps amending the Customs Act of 1964 to incorporate parts of the new Acts, and that makes absolutely no sense to me. “Plus, 15 years down the line, those Acts are now out of date.”Regular issues with the customs EDI is also of concern. Sars says its system is being slowed by higher volumes.“Surely the Sars EDI system must be capable of dealing with any volume. You can’t have industry coming to a dead stop because they can’t handle the number of entries coming through.”Another challenge is the time some customs officials take to release shipments. It can take several days for queries to be finalised, according to Evans.Delays in digitising the prohibited and restricted list were also causing problems, such as unnecessary inspections and holdups due to different interpretations of which products were included, he said. ER
