Exporters to EU count cost of slow officialdom

Certificates for 10 new states still unavailable ALAN PEAT A SLOW change by officialdom is costing SA exporters to Europe a lot of orders – and income. Although it was promised for January 3, the SA Revenue Service (Sars) has not yet added the ten new states that were due to join the list of free trade agreement (FTA) countries in the European Union (EU). Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia were supposed to be added to the other 15 states in the EU which are already eligible for the 50% reduction in duty under the conditions of the FTA - but the vitally needed ER1 certificates are not yet available from Sars. The reason, according to Sars executive Stoffel van Rensburg, is that the appropriate protocol – ratified in the SA parliament on November 15 last year - has not yet been gazetted. “It’s still waiting to be signed by the deputy minister,” he said. However, when he spoke to FTW on January 9, he added that he hoped to see it gazetted “in the next week or two”. But, although Van Rensburg pointed out that the benefits would be applied retrospectively on goods that had been cleared for customs purposes from May 1, 2004 (when the 10 states actually joined the EU), this is not pleasing aspirant exporters to them. According to Terry Malone of the SA Fruit and Vegetable Canners’ Association, for example, his members have been losing a stack of potential export deals because the customers need that essential ER1 country of origin certificate and the 50% reduced duty before they will sign the orders.