New Customs legislation - '2016 at the earliest'

South Africa’s new customs legislation is unlikely to be implemented before 2016, according to expert opinion. While it has been rumoured that the South African Revenue Service (Sars) is aiming for a middle of 2015 deadline, this is thought to be near impossible. According to Clifford Evans, a customs expert for the Western Cape South African Association of Freight Forwarders, a Parliamentary agreement was reached between Sars and industry that the acts would not be implemented until all rules had been made available for public commentary. “At this point only 30 chapters guiding only one of the three new acts have been commented on by industry. We have yet to see another ten chapters of rules for the Customs Control Act as well as all the rules for the Customs Duty Act and the Customs and Excise Amendment Act.” Jean Pool, a Saaff customs executive, agreed, saying it was expected the acts would take effect in 2016. “If they’re looking at an earlier date, the publication of the rules and regulations will have to speed up significantly and the timelines for comment from industry will have to be reduced,” he said. “Taking the complexity of this legislation into consideration it would be very difficult to justify such a move as industry is working exceptionally hard to meet the current deadlines.” Whilst Saaff has commented on 30 chapters to date, Sars has only referred back to what changes have and have not been accepted on the first ten chapters. “We are also not certain if that is the end of the process or if we will be given an entirely new set of rules with the accepted changes captured or if Sars will find that just indicating acceptance of our comments will suffice,” said Evans. Various other role players in the industry are also commenting on the rules and regulations. One exporter, who is part of a group of fruit exporters that has also been submitting comments, told FTW they had not received any feedback as yet from Sars. “We don’t see it being implemented before 2016,” he said.