A fundamental shift needs to take place within Customs towards a more segmented approach in order to facilitate legitimate trade.
That’s according to South African Revenue Service (Sars) acting chief officer Customs & Excise, Beyers Theron, who said that this was especially relevant in terms of how Customs looked at and reacted to compliance to its business processes and legislative requirements.
“We need to get better in terms of how we make sure that our people are following the standard operating procedures that are in place and how they actually understand legislation and apply it consistently across the board.” Theron said that Customs was looking to change the way in which it dealt with those who were compliant, those who were unintentionally non-compliant and might not know what needed to be done in order to become compliant, and those who were blatantly and consistently noncompliant.
“We want to create segmentation in the trade environment whereby we focus our limited resources on really making a change in the little group that is giving us the most problems,” he said.
“We need to shift focus to become an economic role player, an economic facilitator, in many ways for your legitimate trade,” he said. “And I don’t think we get that because we treat our legitimate trade in many ways in the same way that we actually treat the perceived crooks.”
He said that Sars was currently running programmes in the risk space that aimed to improve what the organisation was doing from a risk intelligence and case selection perspective. Theron pointed out that as soon as Sars was able to get better at what they were meant to do on their side, it was only human nature for industry to follow suit and increase their compliance.
“So if we get that right, then I can facilitate legitimate trade and I can actually put my emphasis on the illicit piece, and in that way also protect the economy and society,” he added.
