‘Single window the answer to border congestion’

Trade corridors in southern
Africa can and will see
major improvements if
single window systems are
implemented, according to
Professor Alwyn Hoffman, an
engineer from the North West
University.
“One of the unintentional
causes of trade corridor
inefficiency is the lack of
coordination between the
value chain participants,”
he recently told delegates
attending the Transport
Forum in Cape Town.
“Incomplete documentation is
provided to customs causing
the time duration of the
customs process to increase
from a few minutes to several
days at times.”
Practically this results in
some of the sights we see in
southern Africa such as truck
congestion at ports. “The truck
arrives to pick up the relevant
cargo but as it is now not
available there is a back-up of
vehicles causing congestion
inside the port and at the gate.”
At the same time, said
Hoffman, there were also
intentional causes of why
there was inefficiency on
trade corridors from both
government and the private
sector.
“That can be the driver
dropping off documents and
then heading to the local
shebeen or the customs official
targeting a consignment for a
bribe.”
Hoffmann said the majority
of long delays and poor
efficiency in the movement
of cargo on the corridors
was often due to the lack of
visibility in the process, which
in turn resulted in lack of
culpability.
“If there is real-time
visibility of the current status
of all critical activities, and
of the human operators
responsible for these, then
most underlying causes
will either disappear or will
become manageable,” he said.
The North West University
is at present working with
several industry bodies
including Saaff, Sastalc
and ITSSA to collect and
analyse industry-wide data
in order to create end-to-end
performance measurement
dashboards so that
government and the private
sector can benchmark their
operations.
According to Hoffman,
much can be achieved through
a single window approach.
“A single window
system will represent a
common portal to which all
participants will be connected
and where most critical data
is logged in a structured
manner,” he said. “If data
entered through such a Single
Window System can be linked
to industry-wide performance
monitoring dashboards and
interpreted against the logic
of end-to-end processes, most
of the required elements will
be in place to implement
end-to-end trade corridor
management.”
Therefore instead of
merely being a common
point to process transactions,
the single window system
becomes the catalyst for
much improved corridor
performance.
CAPTION
Hours of downtime as trucks line up at the border.