Full implementation of South Africa’s new customs legislation is unlikely before 2025.
Whilst the New Customs Acts Programme (NCAP), the roll-out of the Customs Duty Act (CDA) and the Customs Control Act (CCA) have kicked off in earnest and are progressing well, Beyers Theron, acting chief officer: customs and excise, said full implementation was years off - confirming the timeline for 2025.
“The new acts were developed to ensure a modern customs administration aligned to the World Customs Organisation (WCO) with clear, transparent and predictable policies, procedures and processes,” said Theron.
The legislation is divided into three streams – registration, licensing and accreditation (RLA), reporting of conveyances and goods (RCG), and declaration of processing (DPS) – and Theron said the focus was on getting the implementation right rather than doing it quickly.
With the first phase of RCG having started in April this year, Theron said the implementation process of the legislation had officially started and was progressing well.
He said one of the biggest challenges experienced thus far was the understanding of the CCA requirements across industry making it imperative that the revenue authority get the process right rather than take a rushed approach.
“It is still early days in the implementation of the new legislation and so the benefits are not all that much but ultimately these acts will bring about expedited processing of road carriers at land borders, promote exports, deliver business competitiveness and stimulate domestic activity,” he said.
Theron admitted that the first phase of NCAP had been a challenge.
“We have seen very low compliance levels of cargo reporting so far, which was a revelation for us. Since then we have had a set of roadshows assisting cargo owners to improve their reporting and get to a certain level of compliance,” he said, indicating that the process had been relatively fruitful.
The second release of RCG - which is rail reports - will be followed by the first release of DPS in December this year.
According to Theron if all goes to plan RLA will be launched in June 2019 followed by the second DPS release. The next phase of RCG is only expected towards the end of next year with another to follow in 2020. The final RCG release is only scheduled for 2021.
Theron said it was difficult to deliver an exact timeline but CCA switch-on was set for 2025.
“We are striving to eradicate complaints as far as possible. We have set a process in place to escalate complaints where necessary,” he said. “We understand that we are not where we should be, but there is a turn-around strategy in place for customs focusing on our service delivery and the improvement of it.”
This included bolstering the skills level within customs, said Theron.
