On 27 June 2023, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) issued the following notice on the interim process for Customs EDI Gateway processing:
- All submitted Local Reference Numbers (LRN’s) which have not received an EDI CUSRES message within 24 hours, must be reviewed and those prioritised LRN’s submitted to the Technical Service Provider for escalation in the backlog pool;
- Please also indicate such to the respective Branch Office, for escalation;
- The Modality HUB will review the LRN and if processed advise the Port to issue a CN1 release as interim release notification – this is a system generated document, issued by a SARS branch;
- This applies to declarations in the Sea Modality only, at this time;
- It may not always indicate a release, but will indicate status and actions to be conducted in order to finalise for release; and
- Traders will still have to engage Other Government Agencies (OGA) where a release is required from an OGA.
This is an interim process and will be in place in the sea modality ONLY until the EDI Gateway has been stabilised and normal electronic processing resumes.
