Gold to the future

Doctor Emmett Brown: “No! It cannot be; I just sent you back to the Future!” Marty McFly: “No, I know; you did send me back to the Future. But I am back – I am back from the Future”. Doctor Emmett... 

Calling on small businesses

In 2021, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Trade Centre (ITC) – established by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the United Nations (UN) through the UN Conference... 

I owe, I owe – the sequel

Over the 21 years of writing this column, there has been the odd temptation to simply resubmit an earlier instalment because, in South Africa, the more things change, the more they remain the same.... 

Customs matters

It’s not often that a book on customs is published. The last such book of significance that I can recall was published in 2003 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) it’s Customs: Challenges and... 

Operation Vulindlela update

What do you know about Operation Vulindela? The piece published in this column on April 2, 2021, headlined ‘Operation Vulindlela’, might provide some insight, or maybe not. The operation’s most... 

Fuel price ‘reduction’ extension

On May 31, the National Treasury and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy issued a media release announcing the “extension of the temporary reduction in the general fuel levy”. This... 

Trade Facilitation Innovation

      The Trade Facilitation Committee was created on February 22, 2017, when the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) entered into force. The TFA contains provisions for expediting the movement,... 

CPI + 7%

“I’ll have what she’s having” is from the memorable restaurant scene in the 1989 comedy, When Harry Met Sally. I was reminded of this when reading a May 20 release from the South African Revenue... 

Do not overthink it

The most challenging economics class to teach is the first-year university class, for the students already ‘know’ all there is to know. This gels with what my grandfather used to tell me: when you... 

SA TIED UP

When does one throw in the towel? Some of my fondest childhood memories are of evenings spent with my father at West Ridge Park, watching boxing, which was not really  my favourite pastime, but my... 

Only one dam built since 1994

If you missed last week’s piece, it concluded by stating that South Africa had built only one power station and had not done any better in terms of dams. The piece was about Eskom. The only dam... 

Load-shedding 101

Room 101, in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a torture chamber in the Ministry of Love where prisoners are subjected to their own worst nightmare, fear or phobia. Here is praying... 

Fuel price ‘reduction’

For the tax year ended March 31, the South African Revenue Service collected R1.56-trillion in net taxes, constituting R1.88-trillion less refunds of R321.1-billion, which equates to 17.04% of the... 

A pledge is what, exactly?

If the headline sounds familiar, it is because it is. If you are a regular reader of this column, or happen to have read the November 27, 2020, instalment of this column, it would be déjà vu all... 

Excise essential guide

The main challenge in international trade is the interchangeable and indiscriminate use of terminology. Take the instance of excise duty – or is it excise tax or excise levy? If you are of the... 

Trade Facilitation Agreement

On February 22, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which entered into force when the WTO obtained acceptance of the TFA... 

Illusory growth

On March 9, the Ministry of Finance issued a media release on the Finance Minister’s response to the debate on the 2022 fiscal framework and revenue proposals. There are a few issues that the... 

GPITT

Don’t you just love acronyms? Well, I do not. They are my pet peeve. In case you were wondering, the word acronym is created from the Greek roots ‘acr’, which means ‘tip’ or ‘beginning’, and... 

Grass is . . .

Grass (read marijuana) is nature’s way of saying ‘high’, as the tongue-in-cheek adage goes. Before putting this column to pasture, however, you might be interested to know that on February 18, the... 

Mere talk leads to poverty

“Talk is cheap, because supply exceeds demand”. Should you prefer the proudly South African version – yes, there is one, first referenced in 1955 – it is: "Talk is cheap, but money buys whiskey.” I... 

Recycled SoNA priorities

As the famed slogan goes, there are three Rs as far as waste management is concerned: reduce, reuse, recycle. But shouldn’t there be a fourth R – rethink? Or rather five, with the sequence being... 

Priorities not achieved

When, on February 7, I asked my favourite search engine this question, “What are the most serious problems in South Africa today?”, it directed me to the South African government’s very own... 

I owe, I owe

In the King James version of the Bible, Proverbs 22 verse 7 states: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Similarly, in Hamlet, William Shakespeare cautions... 

Déjà vu all over again

In her book, The Lies about Truth, Courtney C Stevens states: “If nothing changes, nothing changes. If you keep doing what you are doing, you are going to keep getting what you are getting. You... 

422 not out

If you are reading this column early enough in 2022, you might want to add to your New Year’s resolutions list – that list of realistic and attainable goals – a desire to join your local chamber of... 

New rules on forex payments

On November 26, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) informed of its collaboration with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to combat illicit financial flows and customs valuation fraud... 

Covid vaccine trade tracker

On November 22, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced the launch of the WTO-IMF Covid-19 Vaccine Trade Tracker, which is aimed at providing greater... 

Market analysis tools

By now you must have recovered from the noise that was generated by COP26, which, arguably, should have been labelled a cop-out. If you are not familiar with the reference to ‘cop out’, it simply... 

The final frontier

You might recall these immortal words, or  maybe not, depending on your age: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange... 

GATT – 74 not out

October 30 was the seventy-fourth anniversary of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor (but not in the truest sense of the word) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).... 

HS2022 landing page

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 1839 work, Letters Addressed to R H Horne, stated that “the luck of the third adventure is proverbial”, said to be the origin of the expression “third time’s a charm”.... 

Govt procurement anniversary

On October 2, as I sat down to write this piece, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had just released its new webpage to mark the dual anniversary of its plurilateral Agreement on Government... 

Sars-CoV-2 tariffs

The headlight might lead you to believe that it relates to the South African Revenue Service, or Sars. Sars-CoV-2, however, refers to a virus – the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.... 

DTIC incentives

“There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.” So said Orison Swett Marden, but this begs the question: Would the... 

Structural transformation

Could this be the latest South African economic buzzword? Structural transformation, that is. In its publication, Structural Transformation in Developing Countries: Cross Regional Analysis, the... 

HS 2022 now available – gratis

It’s not often that you get something without having to pay for it. Nowadays, if you are offered something for ‘free,’ it implies that you have to make some kind of commitment, financial or... 

Asycuda turns 40

Before breaking into a celebratory cheer, it bears explaining who, or what, Asycuda is. Asycuda – or the Automated System for Customs Data – is a computerised customs management system covering... 

Scrap metal exportation

Introduced on May 10, 2013, through a trade policy directive, the Price Preference System (PPS) has been subject to numerous reviews and amendments in recent years. The most recent, which is the... 

Customs data analysis

The World Customs Organisation’s (WCO’s) 2018 ‘Draft Guidance on Data Analytics’ describes data analytics as the process of analysing datasets to discover or uncover patterns, associations and... 

National distress duty relief

In the instalment of this column published on August 20 and titled ‘Looting Survey and Hotline’, I wrote about the announcement, on August 11, by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition...