Scoop of the year goes to FTW’s electronic sister publication, SA Customs Buzz, which on January 28 revealed that SA Revenue Service (Sars) had misrecorded SA gold imports and exports – and overstated the trade deficit by R23.55-billion. This beat the national press by six-days. And it took Sars eight-days to announce that – with the statistical correction for gold imports/exports – the shortfall for the year stood at R64.5-bn, down from the R88.05-bn gap it had published the previous week. The brains behind this revelationary analysis were FTW specialist correspondent, Riaan de Lange, MD of Tariff & Trade Intelligence, and Gerhard Bijker of IHS Global Insight.
