The Acting Senior Manager: Trade Administration at Sars issued a letter titled “Revised Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Offered to South Africa by the European Commission (EC)” dated 30 January 2013, which reads. The multinational scheme of generalised tariff preferences applied by the European Commission in terms of Council Regulation (EC) No 980/2005 of 27 June 2005 expired on 31 December 2010. Council Regulation (EC) No 1063/2010 of 18 November 2010 covers the revised version of the scheme of generalised tariff preferences which have been applied from 01 January 2011. Changes provided for in the revised scheme relate to: (i) The determination of the origin criteria which are now more clearly defined on a sector-by-sector basis rather than a product-by-product basis; (ii) The replacement of the direct transport rule with a more flexible non manipulation principle; (iii) The amendment of the definition “its vessels” for fishery products captured outside territorial waters to be considered as wholly obtained; and (iv) The relaxation and adaptation to sectoral specificities of the general tolerance rule from 10% to 15% for agricultural products. The changes do not affect the rules for compliance with origin requirements and the administrative arrangements pertaining to certification and the claiming of preferences. The amended Customs Rules governing the revised GSP-EU have been published in Government Notice No R1096 of 21 December 2012 and have been placed on the Sars website. All interested parties should kindly avail themselves of the content thereof.
