SAAFF and Customs reach accord over harbour tonnage

Alan Peat
AFTER LOUD protests from SAAFF (SA Association of Freight Forwarders), Portnet's port authority division (PAD) has slackened the reins on the declaration of harbour tonnage - used to calculate the ad valorem wharfage.
This as the harbour authorities put a clamp on mis-declarations - which are effectively undervaluing the consignment, and which, PAD claim, are costing them large sums of rightful revenue. So they demanded documentary proof of declared tonnages.
The problem for the forwarders was PAD's original demand for the ocean bill of lading as proof.
That's OK in the case of FCLs (full container loads) - but problems arise when it's an LCL (less than container load) consignment.
"This," said SAAFF's Des Mooney, operations manager of Heneways, "proves impossible in the case of groupage boxes.
"No groupage operator is going to release its master (ocean) bill to you. That would have just too much other confidential information related to the other consignments in the container."
The SAAFF answer, Mooney added, was to try to persuade PAD to accept the groupage operator's house bill of lading. Bills which are, effectively, copies of the relevant information released by the NVOCCs from the master bills to the individual agent handling that specific consignment.
But this didn't succeed until FTW came on the scene.
When we went to Marius Joubert, executive manager (finance) for PAD, for an update, he told FTW: "We will accept arrival notification (as an alternative to the ocean bill) to indicate the harbour tonnage for wharfage purposes.
"However, we retain the right to investigate further if it is felt necessary."
But when we informed Mooney, he rejected this option out of hand - and quoted the harbour tariff book to us.
"Harbour tonnage," says the relevant paragraph, "must be substantiated with the submission of a bill of lading, manifest, packing declaration or supplier's invoice, as the case may be."
But, Mooney added, "there's no mention of what type of bill - and certainly nothing about the arrival notification."
Bearing this information in hand, FTW again contacted Joubert.
After some hours, Mooney phoned to say that the matter had been resolved between himself and Joubert.
And, on checking this, Joubert told FTW: "Yes. We'll now accept the house bill where that's applicable - based on the same right to investigate any such submissions if need be."
And the next day we received official faxed confirmation of the new agreement from Joubert.
Referring "only to groupage containers" the agreement reads: "The Port Authority Division (PAD) has agreed that the Arrival Notification and/or groupage operator's House Bill of Lading - preferably both - duly endorsed by the groupage operator as being true and correct, can be used for the verification of weights/measurements in the calculation of harbour tonnage for groupage containers.
"Furthermore PAD reserves the right to conduct a further investigation in order to substantiate the harbour tonnage."
So - if you can't access the ocean bill of lading from the groupage operator - don't fret. The house bill will satisfy the harbour authorities.