Sunday 31 October saw the official start of the new declaration process under the Customs Modernisation Programme. According to the South African Revenue Service, industry service providers were notified of the new system’s availability at about 5am on Sunday morning. The first entries were received by 6am without any glitches from the system. Described as an effective collaboration between SARS Customs and the industry much of the success of the roll-out has been due to co-operation between all role players. Mario Acosta, managing director of Compu Clearing, said that while there were one or two small hitches, the bulk of entries were being released without problems. “The roll-out from our point of view has been outstanding. It has been extremely successful,” he told FTW. A key component of Customs modernisation is the introduction of an integrated technology platform based on the World Customs Organisation’s (WCO) standards for electronic information exchange. This is expected to go live in the first quarter of 2011 but SARS implemented the new clearance processing requirements on its current technology platform as of 31 October. The new Customs Control and Duty Bills, which are expected to be promulgated next year, set the framework for the new declaration process. Release 1 is a transitional phase that will see existing processes brought in line with the requirements of the new Bills. The biggest change to the new declaration process has been the migration from the use of purpose codes on declarations to procedure category codes (PCC) and customs procedure codes (CPCs).
