The turnaround time for trucks exporting cargo to eSwatini at the Oshoek/Ngwenya port of entry in Mpumalanga has been reduced from 1 hour 42 minutes to just 10 minutes, and the import of similar cargo has seen the time spent at the border slashed from 42 minutes to 10 minutes.
This is according to the Time Release Study (TRS) released yesterday which was conducted jointly by the South African Revenue Services (Sars) and the eSwatini Revenue Service (ERS).
Officials of both entities yesterday said the study had helped identify bottlenecks which led to long delays at the border crossing, as plans were afoot to have a “one window” experience for truck drivers processing freight.
The Oshoek border post was identified as the busiest port of entry in the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), with more than 600 trucks a day passing through with cargo destined for eSwatini, Maputo, Durban Port, and Gauteng.
The TRS is seen as a vital initiative to empirically measure cargo-clearance performance at the border through an end-to-end approach, capturing time stamps/data from the time a truck enters the border from the South African side until it exits the border on the eSwatini side and vice-versa.
The TRS also serves to identify bottlenecks and makes recommendations to overcome them.
The study, conducted over four days in November last year, viewed 323 declarations at the border post for exports and 51 declarations for imports.
It noted that the average waiting time at the border for exports was an hour and 24 minutes on the Oshoek side, one hour and one minute on the Ngwenya side.
For imports, the waiting period was 34 minutes at Oshoek and 43 minutes at Ngwenya, with other immigration protocols averaging 24 minutes.
Some of the time, the study noted, was wasted on truck drivers clearing cargo having to park their vehicles and process their documents along with other immigration traffic which tended to take longer.
Sars Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said though SA’s global trade had declined by 4.5% for imports and 5.5% for exports in the past year, it was still a $24 trillion (R438.1trln ) industry, which worryingly harboured between $1.6 to $2.3trln in illicit trade, hence the importance of proper custom controls.
“Customs play a pivotal facilitation role with the efficacy and efficiency with which trade flows are managed,” Kieswetter said.
“The facilitation role has to be balanced with the enforcement role. Integrity of cross-border supply logistics must guard the domestic economy.”
Kieswetter said Sars believed there was no better time than now to build a single point of declaration for Sacu member states.
He said ways had to be found to unify the reporting of road transport data in the region for better transport controls, as inspections were moved away from the physical to remote viewing and auditing.
Kieswetter said it was noteworthy that R292 billion of the R450bn of potential income gains that the African Free Trade Area Agreement modelled would come simply from a stronger facilitation of trade.
As such, the reduction of red tape and simplifying border procedures was vital to understand and take responsibility that it takes major efforts to cross borders quickly and safely, with minimum interference from officials.
He said trade flows between the two countries were not inconsequential, eSwatini was ranked second as South Africa’s largest trading partner – up from 20th in 2019.
South Africa has maintained a trade surplus over the past five years with the tiny kingdom with exports in mainly refined petroleum products, electricity, and maize in 2023, amounting to just over R30bn.
South Africa imported about R25bn worth of goods from eSwatini and these were in the main resins, beverages’ syrup, sugar, and industrial components.
Kieswetter said trade between the two countries grew 15% or R7.5bn in the past year.
“The TRS at Oshoek/Ngwenya has demonstrated that we can reduce the release time at the border from 90 minutes to 10 minutes.
“It is a phenomenal improvement. On the SA side we need to improve these efficiencies to all our borders, if we are to realise the efficiencies,” he said.
BUSINESS REPORT