Top forwarders... milestones... and the strike

Well, the Saaff AGM has been and gone and Basil Pietersen was re-elected as chair for a third term. The re-structure of the Association is still in progress, although a CEO has yet to be found and appointed. The position has been advertised in the national press and I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more aspiring candidates putting their names forward. Anyway, I eagerly await notification of the final appointment in the not too distant future. The South African candidate nominated for Fiata’s ‘Young Freight Forwarder of the Year’ was Rion Henning of UTi. Well done to Rion and we wish him every success in the international competition. The four global regional winners will be honoured at the annual Fiata Conference to be held in Bangkok during October. Tony D’Almeida reported on the recent ‘Train the Trainer’ programme facilitated by Fiata’s Thomas Sim from Singapore. I understand that all the local trainers passed the subjects of pedagogy and andragogy with flying colours. Now before you reach for your Oxford Dictionary, those bewildering terms simply mean the study of being a teacher and learning strategies for adults. A lover of football, Thomas was presented with a Fifa T-shirt and a vuvuzela at the end of the course. Singapore’s football team is rated 127th in the world, by the way Thomas. Just above Swaziland if you’re interested. The Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) celebrated its 100th anniversary in March. So what is the cost to the South African fiscus of payments into the Union? According to a report by Dave Watts, Treasury figures to March 2010 show customs import duty revenue totalling R19.56 billion and transfers to the Sacu account totalling R27.91 billion. The four BLNS countries are receiving the lion’s share of the account and South Africa therefore effectively subsidises the finances of these states. Swaziland and Lesotho to a significant degree and Namibia and Botswana to a lesser extent. I am led to believe there is increasing pressure in political circles to move away from this current revenue sharing scheme, with the recent recession and reduction in tax revenues fuelling the debate. So how has the Transnet strike affected the clearing and forwarding industry? I would suggest that the combined effect of the port strike, the volcanic ash cloud, the airline strikes, the European debt crisis and the distraction of the World Cup has adversely impacted the already fragile economic recovery of South African importers, exporters and the freight forwarding fraternity alike. I believe it will still be a few months before we see a meaningful upturn in cargo volumes and revenues. And of course such recovery may yet be victim to some economist’s predictions of a recessionary ‘double-dip’. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds there are many more hills to climb.”