Last year legislation was published to support the modernisation of Customs and its move towards a “paperless” declaration processing and release environment. The three Government Notices published between June and December 2009 alternatively enable Customs to replace printed notifications with electronic messages, to enforce the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for the submission of certain reports, cargo and goods declarations and to request supporting documents if needed. These Government Notices affect the cargo and goods declaration processing and release procedures within South Africa and are being implemented/enforced in various stages. As a first phase Sars has concentrated on the international goods declaration process. This was done by enhancing the relevant systems to identify releasing authorities (the location of the goods) and whether they were EDI enabled or not. If they were, then Sars would no longer print notifications and goods were released based on an electronic message to all the Releasing Authorities (RAs) involved in a particular transaction. The “paperless” release messaging increased significantly (see table 1). In terms of the legislation already mentioned, it has been mandatory to submit goods declarations and cargo reports electronically since 1 August 2009. A decision was taken, however, to firstly enforce this at our international borders as from 1 November 2009 and as a second step at the BLNS borders from 1 April 2010. Non-compliance will be penalised. The extent of the electronic uptake is reflected in table 2. 1. International Import from 92% in June 2009 to 97% in Feb 2010, 2. International Export from 64% in June 2009 to 94% in Feb 2010, 3. BLNS Export from 21% in June 2009 to 51% in Feb 2010, 4. BLNS Import from 0% in June 2009 to 1% in Feb 2010. The submission of cargo reports is currently receiving attention with the goal of increasing the number of information providers in respect of air, rail and sea consignments. The result of implementation so far has been very positive with a substantial increase in the use of EDI.
