‘MAS would offer big benefits for roadfreight’

It is all very well that the SA Revenue Service (Sars) manifest acquittal system (MAS) applies to seafreight and airfreight cargo imports, but this means that road transport is deprived of what would be a very beneficial system, according to Brian Kalshoven, GM of Beitbridge Border Clearing Agency. And, he added, this electronic data interchange (EDI) version of cargo clearance could be more simply applied to the roadfreight industry than to the other two modes. “But it’s not the case. We are still being held responsible for seeing that every load on a truck is cleared before it is released. If a vehicle departs the border with one of its loads inadvertently uncleared, Sars takes no responsibility, despite them having the final say on release or not.” And the authorities don’t seem to have any plans to remedy this concern. “Much easier to whack the clearing agent with an enormous penalty.” The basic aims of the MAS are just what the road transport industry is desperately looking for, Kalshoven said. • receiving cargo information electronically before a vehicle’s arrival; • subjecting cargo information to risk profiling before the arrival of the cargo in order to timeously identify goods that require intervention; • ensuring that all cargo discharged is accounted for by a valid customs process; • acquitting manifests electronically against import declarations; • basing customs interventions on exceptions; • making optimum use of electronic data interchange for the communication of cargo information; and • establishing an efficient paperless environment and eradicating laborious manual tasks.” This, he added, would overcome all the problems of the current manual system. “The acquittal and control of manifests on a manual, paper-based process is slow and inefficient. There is a lack of proper cohesion between manifest control and clearance processes and too many parties are involved in decision-making, which minimises control over the complete process. “The quicker Sars gets round to applying the MAS to roadfreight the better it will be for us – instead of fighting the current, out-ofdate system.”