The South African Revenue Service (Sars) Registration, Licensing, and Accreditation (RLA) Division informed its stakeholders, also known as traders or clients, through a letter dated November 17, of the Automation of the Customs and Excise African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement.

As part of its modernisation efforts, Sars is automating the AfCFTA Agreement for its customs and excise clients. To facilitate modernisation, Sars published the necessary legal instruments on January 26, 2024. Trade began shortly thereafter – on January 31, 2024 – for approved tariff offers to and from countries such as Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tunisia.

In essence, the AfCFTA’s primary objective is to create a single market that unifies 55 African countries for goods and services, easing the movement of goods, people, and capital. Its other objectives are to eliminate trade barriers, to boost intra-African trade, and to harmonise policies.

Trading with Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries takes place under the SADC Trade Protocol, a plurilateral agreement that aims to promote regional economic integration by creating a free trade area through a gradual reduction in tariffs and other trade barriers. The protocol applies to goods originating from AfCFTA member States to ensure that they receive preferential treatment.

Clients must be registered with Sars as exporters or producers before being allowed to trade under the AfCFTA Agreement, and this registration process previously required manual submission.

From November 1, clients can submit applications for the following three client types under the AfCFTA Agreement through the RLA system: exporter under the AfCFTA Agreement, approved exporter under the AfCFTA Agreement, and producer under the AfCFTA Agreement.

Sars offers the following nine steps to migrate these client types to the RLA system:

• To start, log in to Sars eFiling or visit a Sars Customs and Excise office. The Sars website should classify the branch as one which provides ‘branch front-end’ electronic capturing. The client should send a representative to the Sars Customs and Excise branch office to provide the RLA information. However, Sars recommends using eFiling instead to help clients avoid queues.

• Sars Customs and Excise employees who perform customs registration or licensing-related activities must obtain the appropriate eFiling user rights and RLA profiles from clients’ eFiling administrators. This will enable the necessary access to the new RLA system on eFiling.

• The next step is to refer to Sars’ RLA webpage – https://www.sars.gov.za/customs-and-excise/registration-licensing-and-accreditation/rla/ – for more information on RLA on eFiling. All Sars guides and presentations are available through this link.

• eFilers with an individual profile must now change their profile to ‘Organisation’.

• Continue by navigating to RLA on eFiling.

• Your existing customs code must be available for selection. If you do not see your customs code for selection, follow the ‘Merge process’. More information about merging is available at https://www.sars.gov.za/about/sas-tax-and-customs-system/efiling-system/merging-tax-profiles/. As an existing customs client, you may have more than one customs code displayed on the customs-code selection screen. In such an instance, you should select the preferred code and register “all client types” in RLA using it. If any customs codes are displayed that are no longer in use, they must be cancelled by submitting a manual cancellation application at any Sars Customs and Excise office listed on the Sars website.

• On the RLA dashboard, click on the drop-down arrow and select ‘New Application’ (being the process for updating information).

• Now you need to navigate the client-type wizard to registration: select ‘Exporter’ (Exporter in terms of the AfCFTA or Approved Exporter – AfCFTA). It is important to note that, as a client, you must register as an exporter before you can select the next level (‘Exporter i.t.o. AfCFTA’).

• You then proceed by filling in the required information and completing the process by uploading any required supporting documents.

Now it is over to Sars, which, upon successful submission, will send you a reference or case number via email or SMS notification.

Should you require more detailed information, you can access the Sars letter with this information by checking the RLA inbox on eFiling or by visiting the Sars website to access the Sars Query Online System to download RLA correspondence.