Ministerial indecision and government inefficiency are causing significant delays for importers, says a new report by an international trade consultancy., based on an independent analysis of publicly available data, says the fiscus has lost R1.25-billion while importers wait for up to two years for decisions on overdue Import and Export Control customs duty investigations which should take no longer than six months.
Nobody wins, because both the fiscus and SA industries are taking a knock. For the latter, in some cases, there is no possibility of recovery as many businesses cannot sustain the losses., in the 2021/2022 financial year, comprising 3.7% of revenue collection by the SA Revenue Service . These delays equate to about 5.8% of the country’s total customs duty collections.
Once an application has been received by Itac, it reviews the contents and an Itac commission decides if a case should be initiated, in which case a notice is published in theand interested parties have about a month to respond, the report noted. These parties can request up to two weeks’ extension and then the comment period closes.
The report said it would make sense to set a time limit on tariff investigations of 18 months so that they are forced to be completed and all uncertainty is removed. “Of the 43 tariff investigations and three anti-dumping investigations which are currently open, 27 are overdue [58%], so this time limit is important.”