New Zimra electronic requirement falls flat

The recent announcement by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority of a new ruling requiring advance electronic submission of manifests is in line with a general electronic drive by Customs administrations worldwide. “Sars is doing it here and Zimra is doing it there,” Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations executive director Barney Curtis told FTW. According to the Zimra notice, all goods vehicle operators, foreign or local, are required to submit advance electronic manifests no later than three hours before the arrival of the vehicle at the port of entry into Zimbabwe. “This gives Zimra enough time to risk-profile goods and passengers,” a spokesman said. “By rolling out this system, Zimra is moving in tandem with international best practice in trade facilitation and risk management as it allows identification of low and high risk cargo and passengers to facilitate expeditious clearance processes,” he added. The intentions are clearly honourable, but transport operators on the route say nothing has changed. The notice states that all local transporters will have to be registered with Zimra in order to submit the manifest through the Asycuda system. “However, since the e-cargo manifest is yet to be rolled out, all transporters must submit their cargo manifest through an email address specific to their port of entry,” according to a statement from Zimra. And that appears to be where the problem lies. According to Alwyn Nel, MD of Kingfisher Freight, the email system is not functioning. “Zimra has issued instructions, but it’s not being done electronically because the system doesn’t work. The email address to which the information has to be forwarded doesn’t appear to be operating so we’re giving it to Customs manually when we do a report of the arrival of the vehicle,” Nel told FTW. “Basically nothing has changed apart from the fact that they have issued a number of statements and information. There are lots of laws, but they don’t have the wherewithal to ensure implementation.” Warren Jayes of Leo Transport Services had a similar tale to tell. “Although the system has started already and is applicable to both imports and exports, we have not yet seen any effect on clearance times. “Transporters submit the manifests electronically to two email addresses for Zimra Beitbridge, but at this stage do not receive any information back from these addresses.”