New Customs law could be operational by 2015

South Africa’s contentious customs bills have been given the presidential go-ahead and were published in the government gazette two weeks ago. D-day for implementation, however, remains unknown and will be announced by presidential decree in the government gazette once the supporting customs rules are in place. According to a spokesman for the South African Revenue Service (Sars), the Customs Duty Bill was published first as the Customs Duty Act, 2014 (Act No. 30 of 2014) in the Gazette of July 10 following the president's go-ahead, while the Customs Control Bill and the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill were in the process of being published. By the time FTW goes to print this will have been done. This means the bills are now an act of Parliament and officially the new customs law of the country despite not yet being operational. “The bills will only become operational once the president has advised on a date,” said the spokesman. It is uncertain when this will be as the process around the rules guiding the acts has only just kicked off, with the first industry comment expected this week.” The first ten chapters of the rules were published earlier this month with a due date of July 29 for all external comment. Once all the comments have been processed the president will be approached to decide the final date for the new legislation to become effective. The process has, however, significantly speeded up and it is rumoured that the new law will be operational as soon as 2015. According to Clifford Evans, a customs adviser for Ceva Logistics, who has read the first ten chapters of the rules, there have been no big surprises so far. “There are some technical issues that industry is commenting on and would request changes for,” he told FTW. One such item was the rules stating that all records relating to the customs bills have to be stored on the premises of the business for a period of time. “That is very difficult with limited physical storage space for most companies and so one can expect that the industry would request from Sars that they rephrase that to allow for off-site storage facilities and electronic storage as well,” he said. “Another technical issue that has come up is that importers, according to the rules, will have to provide documents within one day of requests being issued by customs. That is very difficult to do as one might receive the document only days after it has been issued. It would be understandable if Sars requested that a response be submitted within a day of receiving the documentation rather than within a day from the date issued, which is unreasonable.” Sars has called on the freight and logistics industry to take cognisance of the published rules and regulations and to ensure comment is received within deadline by July 29, 2014. INSERT The process around the rules guiding the acts has only just kicked off, with the first industry comment expected this week.