Within a relatively short time, the way a customs declaration, or bill of entry, is processed by customs has changed drastically, in most instances for the good, with a few exceptions.
As per the Customs External Policy Clearance Declaration, “Every importer or exporter of goods must lodge a CCD when goods are imported into or exported from South Africa, except when exempted by Rule”. The SAD 500 is therefore the foundation document on which all imports and exports is based, and understanding the process of submitting this document is essential.
Using Cape Town as an example for this column, in the good ole days when everything was manual, a sea freight entry was handed in at the customs office in the Cape Town CBD, and airfreight entries were submitted to the customs office at what was then D F Malan Airport. Queries, detentions, inspections etc were dealt with directly at those branches. Then along came EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) in 2009, a major step forward in introducing technology to the customs environment. Although declarations were now submitted electronically, sea freight was still submitted to the Cape Town office and airfreight to the airport office, and all matters relating to those entries remained with those branches. The next step came a few years later when all declarations for the Western Cape were received by the Cape Town customs office and for airfreight, only the physical inspection process was carried out by the airport branch office. The rollout of this process had very little impact on trade and, in general, was welcomed.
Unfortunately, the next system enhancement almost brought the clearing and forwarding industry nationwide to a halt. Without consultation or warning, customs implemented a national pool system whereby all declarations were channelled into a national pool and cases were allocated to the next available documentary inspector, irrespective of where they were stationed. Almost immediately, every declaration was queried, leading to enormous delays - and depots were soon overrun with stopped shipments. Chaos reigned supreme, with clearing agents not knowing where their entries were or who was dealing with them, and customs eventually resorted to auto-releasing entries to clear the backlog. With improvements over time, and escalation processes made available, this system remained in place until very recently when the latest change took place.
Customs has implemented a modality structure and, for the clearing and forwarding industry, it’s open to debate whether this is conducive to trade facilitation or not. Land, air and sea modalities have been established, with all airfreight entries processed by the customs Doringkloof office, sea freight entries processed by both Cape Town and Durban, and road transport (land modality) processed by Alberton. While this structure may work well for Sars, it raises challenges for trade. Back to the Cape Town example, having to deal with customs in Durban for a stopped consignment cleared for Cape Town is challenging enough, but having to deal with customs in Doringkloof for an airfreight consignment in Cape Town, when time is of the essence, presents a bigger challenge. Although communication, for the most part, is electronic, the escalation processes for each modality only work if responded to immediately and efficiently by the hub managers within the modalities. Be that as it may, it is essential that every declaration submitted, regardless of modality, is valid to prevent delays, additional costs and possible penalties.
