South Africa’s new customs legislation has been more than 1000 days in the making.
It has been a massive and complex undertaking trying to bring South African customs law in line with international standards, including the revised Kyoto Convention and the World Customs Organisation’s SAFE Framework, while at the same time ensuring that the legislation is in line with the technological advances that have been made since 1964 when the current legislation was drafted.
The legislation and the process of writing it has been under scrutiny since the very beginning. FTW set out to determine what has been accomplished and what still lies ahead in this long and arduous process.
The first rewrite of the current Customs and Excise Act, 1964 officially began in 2003. “The Sars Modernisation Programme was an integral part of this process which eventually led to the Customs Control Act being published on 10 July 2014 and the Duty Act and the Excise Amendment Act on 23 July 2014,” said Clifford Evans, a Cape Town based customs expert who has been closely involved in the process from the beginning.
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