Industry members have disputed concerns – contained in a non-tariff barrier complaint against the South African Revenue Service (Sars) lodged by a Chinese shipper – that there are major delays at the Eswatini border due to inconsistencies in Customs requests for documentation. The complainant said that he was experiencing excessive delays and incurring storage and demurrage charges at the port of discharge in Cape Town as Sars continued to withhold the consignment amid conflicting requests for documentation. It is not known what the consignment is and FTW was unable to obtain any additional information from the shipper. The NTB complaint was lodged in April and has yet to be resolved. Sars has yet to answer questions sent to them over a week ago. Yet calls to industry members reveal that while there have been a few delays at the Eswatini border, these have been resolved “fairly quickly and painlessly”. Easy Clear sales manager Michael Henning told FTW that there had been some delays around the matching of the Unique Consignment Reference (UCR) number between South Africa and Eswatini, but other than that there hadn’t been any major issues that he had heard of. He explained that the matching of the UCR number had been introduced “some time ago” for a number of reasons, among them to combat fraud. “The UCR number submitted on the respective countries’ declarations should match the opposite declaration in the other country when submitting via electronic data interchange (EDI),” said Henning, adding that there could be delays experienced while the paperwork was resolved. A well-placed industry source who preferred to remain anonymous told FTW that while he couldn’t comment on the specific NTB without any documentary proof, he was not aware of any major issues at the border. “It is a common perception that Sars makes money from stops or detentions but nothing is further from the truth, which is why we need documentary evidence to support such a claim,” he added. He pointed out that the border posts were a particular problem for illicit trade, counterfeit goods, copyright infringement and smuggling and that Sars had introduced several measures to safeguard the country’s economy and ensure legitimate trade. He said the people who complained were normally those who had something to hide or were ignorant of the specific rules and regulations.
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There have been some delays around the matching of the Unique Consignment Reference number. – Michael Henning