On Sunday morning, 31 October 2010 (just after 05h00) the culmination of 11 months hard work resulted in a successful rollover of the old customs procedures to the new. All current transactional clearance systems, information systems and the EDI gateway were successfully implemented. Thus the path to compliance of the Revised Kyoto Convention has been set in motion with several more planned enhacements in the pipeline.

The Customs operational support centre, together with all the call centres supporting industry service providers (ICT providers to the shippers and brokers) – some 20 in total I believe – kicked into place to support the customs user through the new customs clearance process.

I heard a comment that Monday (1 Nov) was too late to issue a report on the Customs implementation – evidently from a reporter’s perspective, news must be pre-emptive or current. I obviously differ and believe that a few weeks of operation need to pass by in order to accurately assess and gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of the upgraded systems and procedures.

Weeks of preparation covering the new customs procedures, implementation and fall-back plans, were supported by a contingent of willing volunteers in both SARS and industry to foster knowledge and user readiness. Almost 11 months of weekly technical sessions were avidly attended by service providers and a few shipping experts. Regular health checks were conducted to gauge trade readiness and developments. The original implementation date of 1 October 2010, was timeously postponed to afford SARS and trade additional time to satisfactorily accomplish a state of ‘joint’ readiness. While this created some initial setbacks for some providers, hindsight proves that the additional month was both very necessary and warranted for all parties.

After almost a week’s operation of the new process, it can be unequivocally stated that the implementation was a success. However, while this view is held by most, it is vigorously opposed by others. More about this in a followup post.