South African importers of goods from India need to be aware of the Indian Customs Electronic Data Interchange Gateway (“ICEGATE”) to which the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has access.
The export information for exports from India is captured on the ICEGATE system, so if you are a South African importer buying goods from India, especially goods against which the Indian authorities offer an export subsidy, you should log on to the ICEGATE system and verify that the information shown on ICEGATE is correct and ties to the sales contract and the export invoice presented to you by the exporter. The reason is that there is the potential that the Indian exporter may over-value the goods on the export entry. If Sars compares the information on the ICEGATE system to the bill of entry presented to Sars, the importer will be held liable by Sars for under-declaring the values to Sars.
There has been some suggestion that Sars is in talks with China and that a similar arrangement may be reached with China in a year or two which will allow Sars to compare the export value declared in China with the import value declared in South Africa.