Clearance of Zambian goods hits paper snag

Beitbridge runs relatively smoothly REBUILDING OF the road between Musina and the Beitbridge is on schedule and engineers are confident of meeting their July 2007 deadline, says Brian Kalshoven of Musinabased Beitbridge Border Clearing Agency. “Of late, throughput of clearing documents has been relatively smooth with delays at a minimum,” says Kalshoven. “There has however been a problem with the clearance of Zambian goods qualifying for preferential duty rates through SADC rebates – this because the Zambian authorities ran out of stocks of the SADC origin certificates. “Although the Zambians tried to alleviate the problem by issuing certificates on photocopies of a certificate and backing it up with an explanatory letter, South African Customs was having none of it and refused to allow the rebates, despite entreaties being sent in locally and to Customs head office. Discussions at SADC level continue.” BBCA recently became part of the Linked Logistics chain which combines the services of Professional Clearing in Bulawayo, managed by Funny Mpofu, BBCA and Regional Link of Kempton Park, managed by Rachel Clark. “The three provide consolidation, warehousing, forwarding and customs clearing services, offering exporters the significant benefits of dealing with one chain sharing the same business philosophy and ethics,” says managing director Joe Langlois. “All three offices, including Professional Clearing’s Beitbridge and Harare offices, electronically share the same registration, monitoring and status reporting programmes, enabling them to pre-clear and keep clients up-to-date on the movement of their consignments.”