Strong moves to address non-tariff barriers

Non-tariff barriers in several
countries continue to
pose major challenges to
transporters who have to work their
way through a bevy of restrictive
and punitive legislation, levies and
taxes.
Most recently the Democratic
Republic of the Congo implemented
an income tax for transporters
regardless of whether they are
registered in the country or not.
“The freight forwarder or the
agent is the registered company
in the DRC and should be paying
the income tax, but in the Katanga
province legislation requires the
trucking company also to pay
income tax. This has been gazetted
and if transporters do not want to
have their trucks impounded, they
must pay,” says Barney Curtis,
executive director of the Federation
of East and Southern African Road
Transport Associations (Fesarta).
And pay they do – in some cases
tax of up to $100 000 is charged to
the transporters.
“The matter has been taken up
with the DRC central government
as it is becoming increasingly
problematic,” says Curtis.
But rumours have it that the
central government has no way of
stopping Katanga province charging
this income tax unless they move the
entire border post to another region.
“We have in the past just not
placed enough emphasis on the
non-tariff barriers,” says Curtis.
“Comesa, SADC and the East
African Community (EAC) have
set up a non-tariff barrier system
to address these barriers. At the
moment though the system has no
teeth and countries can get away
with the charges they are levying.”
Curtis says the challenge lies in
getting the system functioning to
its maximum level. “The system
must have the authority to address
countries that are not following
procedures and that are offenders.
It must also have a means of
ensuring that action is taken against
a country that introduces a punitive
regulation.”
He says that would bring about
much more clout when dealing with
transgressing countries instead of
dealing with issues one at a time in a
shotgun approach.
“Much work is currently going
into the development of this system
so that it has the ability to bring
countries into line,” he says.