The SA Revenue Service (Sars) and the Department of Transport are engaging with business to resolve the customs-related issue that led to the detention of five vessels involved in bunkering operations off the Coast of Algoa Bay.
Maritime Business Chamber (MBC) chairperson Unathi Sonti said the chamber had written to President Cyril Ramaphosa to highlight the impact Sars’ detention of the vessels was having on local businesses and to ask him to intervene in the matter. Sars detained the vessels earlier this month for an indefinite period, bringing the country’s bunkering operations at Algoa Bay to a halt.
“The Maritime Business Chamber believes that the South African Revenue Service has placed all resources at its disposal, in order to resolve this matter. As a chamber, we are aware that Sars is one of South Africa’s top-performing government institutions with the responsibility of growing the country's revenue, facilitating legitimate trade and growing the economy in its deployment of its instruments of enforcement,” Sonti said.
“The chamber wrote to the presidency because there was a need to alert the government at large on the impact of detention and halting of operations, especially to job security and the economy of the impacted area. We are not at odds with Sars as we all have the same objective, which is to enable trade and to raise the levels of compliance,” Sonti said.
“We believe we will soon find a resolution to this matter as already the Department of Transport, through the South African Maritime Safety Authority, has engaged the industry and Sars for an amicable solution and we support such a process.”
About 30 000 vessels sail along the coast of South Africa each year and approximately 13 000 visit its ports annually. Bunker replenishment has been identified as an important component of the government’s development programme, ‘Operation Phakisa: Oceans Economy’.
In 2016 the first offshore bunkering operations were launched in the Nelson Mandela Bay ports. The first offshore bunkering service in South African waters got under way in Algoa Bay, with Aegean Marine Petroleum Network deploying their bunkering vessel MT Lefkas to Port Elizabeth, as well as registering the tanker, which now flies the South African flag, to revitalise the bunkering business that had until then seen a long decline due to port capacity and other constraints.
Located within a few miles of heavily trafficked international shipping lanes, the bunkering operation is well positioned as a natural stopover on routes to Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and both coasts of Africa.
According to the MBC, approximately two million metric tons of bunker fuel is sold annually in the region.
A total of 6 191 ships have conducted bunkering operations in Algoa Bay since 2016, creating hundreds of on- and offshore jobs in the local small business sector in the region. The MBC raised concern in its letter to the president that the detention of vessels was having a negative impact on investor sentiment and risked destroying the local jobs that had been created.
