Enormous strides have been made toward paperless dream

The impact of electronics on the freight industry has been immense, according to Arnold Garber, chairman of the freight system specialists, Compu-Clearing. The number of things that have been changed for the better are many, he reckoned, but probably the largest single dream that the advent of electronics, computers and communication has been working to achieve is “the paperless environment”. “It hasn’t fully happened yet – and, in my opinion, is never likely to be completely achievable – but we have certainly made enormous strides towards it,” Garber added. “We have now reached what I suppose could best be termed “a paperreduced world.” A big contributor to this has been the SA Revenue Service Customs. “In the early days there were just so many departments of Customs that needed printed copies of a bill of entry (BOE) that you used to need to print seven copies of each. An electronic solution soon cured that problem, but the big question still remained about customs. They started talking electronic data interchange (EDI) some five to six years ago, but how were they going to go? “I must say that, because of very many previous attempts by customs to streamline the system which hadn’t improved things much at all, there was some scepticism about whether customs’ EDI would work,” Garber said. “But Customs surprised us all, and did an excellent job.” There were still some gaps in the wire. All the world’s Customs authorities and the whole freight industry wanted a global system that would form a complete “paper trail” (although electronically recorded) of every single change of cargo status right along the supply chain from beginning to end. The manifest acquittal system (MAS) – just coming on-stream – is looking to plug a gap in the SA Customs/industry EDI system, according to Garber. “It leaves, for example, a way for an unscrupulous employee of an airline who is in cahoots with an outside criminal element to do an ‘under the counter’ release to them of a shipment,” he said. “Without going into the technicalities, the MAS is the first step to prevent something like this, will give customs more control and help in their efforts to achieve the complete paper-trail. “The streamlining impact of electronic solutions has been great, and the results of the joint customs/freight industry system link-up have changed the whole face of the global trade industry to be quicker, better and more efficient.”