The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has undertaken to investigate allegations of under- or misdeclaration of manufactured goods, particularly from Indonesia.
This is after Western Cape Exporters’ Club chairman Terry Gale exposed suspected unfair competition between imported products and locally manufactured household items.
Following the initial report in Freight News on 27 August, “Sars looking into allegations of manipulated declarations”, Gale confirmed that he had received a call from Charles Witbooi, senior manager of Custom & Excise at the tax authority.
According to Witbooi “Sars has a dedicated task team addressing misdeclarations, however, mainly relative to the clothing and textile industry”.
Gale added that “Sarsis quite happy to look into this, and work through the industrial body that represents that particular industry”.
As for the revenue service’s task team on clothing and textile assisting Gale in his enquiry, it’s interesting that it correlates with relevant information relied on from a previous column carried by Freight News earlier this year.
In the column in question, columnist Devlyn Naidoo of SA Maritime School and Transport College starkly illustrated the effect manipulated import declaration could have on the local clothing and textile industry.
He wrote: “Local market erosion through unfairly advantaged and tax-flouting trade has hollowed out the local clothing and textile industry to a shadow of its former self, employing roughly 19 000 people compared to 200 000 some 25 years ago.
“Under-declaration of customs value in the sector,” he stressed, “increased from R5.2 billion in 2014 to R8.52 billion in 2018, with the under-declared customs value in 2017 and 2018 representing 34% and 35% of the declared customs value respectively.”
Gale said it was encouraging to see Sars looking out for the interests of local manufacturers.
Freight News will endeavour to track this story as it develops.
