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The WCO’s Accelerate Trade Facilitation Programme Partners exchange Best Practices towards Post Clearance Audits, Authorized Economic Operator and Risk Management: South African Revenue Service hosts Nigeria Customs Service

08 十月 2024

The WCO’s Accelerate Trade Facilitation Programme, funded by the United Kingdom via His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), enabled an exchange of best practice by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), pertaining to implementation of Post Clearance Audit (PCA), Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) and Risk Management (RM). This peer-to-peer exchange took place in South Africa at the SARS Head Office in Pretoria from 16 to 20 September 2024.

The NCS is aiming to improve its Risk Management strategies by implementing a robust post clearance audit mechanism which will enable measurement and improvement of trade compliance, thereby securing revenue whilst facilitating legitimate trade. In her opening remarks, Ms Tebogo Ntuli who is the Business Area Lead of the SARS Customs and Excise Compliance Cluster, underscored the importance of exchanging skills and capacity between the two Administrations due to the similar operating environments and shared risks. This statement was also supported by the Head of SARS’s International Cooperation, Ms Thabile Ntombela, who emphasized the importance of exchange of information and the implementation of tools that will improve economies of both countries through trade facilitation, as well as promotion of intra-continental trade as per the objectives of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). SARS conveyed insightful and practical methodologies on post clearance audits as well as risk management and underscored how various stakeholders can be utilized efficiently for data collection purposes to enable accurate risk identification. SARS also emphasized the importance of having a compliance philosophy which segments traders based on their compliance behaviour. This includes an analysis of different needs by various economic operators to reduce barrier to entry for Small Medium Enterprises and Women in Trade through inclusive segmentation models, as accentuated by Ms Rae Vivier, who is the Head of the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) division in SARS.

The activities of the week also included visits to economic operators to showcase Customs to Business Partnership and learning about the impact of trade facilitation benefits for businesses that are participating in SARS’s AEO Programme. The economic operator stated that SARS’s AEO programme has allowed them to save a minimum of R18 000 per container due to reduced demurrage costs and waiver of financial guarantees.

SARS, through its compliance philosophy, has structured its PCA models in a way that distinguishes between normal audits and Customs investigations. The research that is continually conducted has displayed trends for criminal behaviour by those traders who do not want to comply, and thus, SARS will continue to make it difficult and costly for this segment of traders, as per its strategic objectives. The signed Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement (CMAA) between Nigeria and South Africa was acknowledged as a potential tool that could be leveraged upon to enable data exchange for the identified international trade risks between the two countries.

At the end of the week, the NCS presented key areas that will be updated on both their AEO & PCA manuals, risk management strategy and capacity building plan. These will include amongst others, the method of selecting cases for audit utilizing risk management methodologies, development of critical skills and competency framework for key activities within RM, PCA and AEO, utilization of technology to manage end to end processes within the value chain and update of stakeholder management for data exchange to manage risk of non-compliance.

The WCO Accelerate Trade Facilitation Programme is looking forward to its continued partnership with NCS for sustainable trade facilitation reforms and inclusive economic prosperity.

For more information on the Accelerate Trade Facilitation Programme, please see here.

For more information on WCO capacity building, please contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org .