Complain about the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS) at your peril. Companies seeking assistance for ongoing delays and issues with the NRCS are being targeted, according to Dean Macpherson, shadow minister of trade and industry for the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Commenting on ongoing concerns around the performance of the NRCS, Macpherson told FTW he had seen businesses being targeted when seeking help from MPs.
“Arbitrary requirements are placed on customers, which they have never had to provide previously. Added to this, the NRCS can approve an application one time and then decline the same format the next time for no reason,” he said.
In June, NRCS acting CEO Edward Mamadise told members of the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry in parliament that the organisation had improved its turnaround times for processing letters of authority (LOAs), but admitted there was still a significant backlog to address.
The backlog and delay in the issuing of LOAs have been a cause of major frustration by commerce and industry, particularly as they have to bear the cost of storage until the imported goods are removed from customs warehouses. Mamadise noted in his presentation that in 2016- 17 only 37% of applications had been processed within 120 days, which was the set turnaround time.
In 2017-18, this had doubled with the NRCS processing 74% of applications within 120 days. According to Macpherson there has been no improvement in the NRCS. “They continue to take 120 days or more to approve LOAs and the worst part is they only actually look at the LOA anywhere been 100 and 110 days after receiving it, leaving very little time to rectify any shortcomings from the side of applicants,” he said.
This was affirmed by Berry & Donaldson customs liaison manager Clifford Evans who said the situation remained as dire as ever.
“The 120 days is still the norm, in some cases much longer.” An importer of heavy-duty machines told FTW the NRCS’s inability to timeously deal with LOAs was significantly driving up costs with some of their equipment having been held up since last year.
Storage costs in themselves were high – not to mention the loss of income or the price of unreliability in a competitive market when one could not deliver products to customers, he said Stefan Sakoschek, a consultant for the EU Chamber of Commerce and Industry in southern Africa, said any claims of improved performance were simply not true. In addition, the decision by Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies to dissolve the SABS board with immediate effect last month was having a knock-on effect and the issuing of LOAs was as slow as ever.
“There is absolutely no reason why international certificates of imported products are not being recognised from the outset as the equivalent. The issuing of an LOA should take three days – 21 at the most – definitely not 120,” he said. “It is still the same run around. They say they have put in place a risk-based process and assessment system but nothing has changed.”
He said a summit was being organised for later this year by various manufacturing associations and industry bodies and the EU Chamber in an effort to come up with some kind of solution as the NRCS's inability to perform was hampering business from trading. “It is undoubtedly a barrier to trade that comes at a huge cost,” said Sakoschek.
Macpherson said he was waiting for a plan from Davies on how the administrator would fix the SABS. “I do believe this will have a knock-on effect for the NRCS and will only slow them down even more. Davies has appointed dti group COO Jodi Scholtz, industrial development division deputy director-general Garth Strachan, and technical infrastructure institutions chief director Dr Tshenge Demana as administrators for SABS until January next year.
When this issue went to print NRCS spokesman Daniel Ramarumo had not yet responded to questions put to him by FTW.
