As early as October 2024, there were reports of delays in the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) system of the South African Revenue Service (Sars).
In simple terms, response messages (CUSREC) to the submission of a declaration were delayed, effectively slowing the release of shipments for both air and sea freight.
At first, these delays did not appear to be serious, as the actual time delay was in minutes and occurred sporadically.
Recently, however, the situation has changed, and the delays have occurred more often and, in some instances, went from minutes to hours.
When the Sars EDI platform functions efficiently, a release message can be received within seven seconds, and therefore a delay of anything up to two hours becomes a serious challenge.
These delays continued throughout November and December and into January, becoming a norm rather than an exception.
In addition to the technical delays, there has been an increase in the number of Sars scheduled maintenance notices issued.
Even though maintenance is scheduled over weekends, declarations can be submitted 24/7 adding to delays in obtaining releases. Whilst trade understands the need for system maintenance and appreciates Sars notifying trade of the scheduled times, and which systems will be affected, the actual reasons for the maintenance is not disclosed.
Is it for repairs, system enhancements, to make changes or to do an upgrade? This question becomes very important when taking the main reason for the above-mentioned delays into account, and this is why eyebrows should be raised.
“High import volumes” is consistently given as the reason for delays in the EDI messaging system, and this is the reason posted on the Sars EDI Bulletin Board when the delays occur.
This obviously begs the question – why is the EDI platform not able to handle the number of declarations being submitted?
This is a far more important issue than the actual delays which may, in some instances, be only a few minutes. If the system is failing, it is not unreasonable to expect the number of delays to increase, but also the length of the delays. For context, there were seven reports of delays in November, three in December and five in January, excluding scheduled maintenance. These numbers may not seem significant but let us not forgot what happened in June 2023.
Sars experienced an EDI crisis that resulted in huge delays to trade, and eventually Sars had to revert to issuing manual releases. The private sector collaborated very closely with Sars to avoid what could have been more than just a crisis. The reason for the EDI system failing was “upgrades to the e-filing Tax digital platform and volume of CUSDEC’s in the pipeline created disruptions to the EDI gateway”.
The warning signs were apparent in 2023 and yet the same issues are being experienced currently. Looking forward, if the implementation of the National Single Window is successful but the EDI system fails, the release of shipments will not only be delayed by Customs but by all OGAs (other government agencies) as well.
The EDI system is the portal to the Single Window, and if EDI fails, the implications should be obvious.
