South Africa prioritizing closing loopholes in e-commerce: Sarupen

As part of efforts in positioning customs as an economic enabler, South Africa is working on an enhanced e-commerce strategy.

Deputy Finance Minister Ashor Sarupen  addressed the opening of the 2025 Governing Council of the World Customs meeting in Pretoria hosted by SARS.

The World Customs Organisation East and Southern Africa Governing Council meets annually to discuss challenges faced by customs in the SADC region.

The delegates have flagged the rise in e-commerce activities, global trade instability, and illicit financial flows as a threat to emerging economies and customs facilitation.

Sarupen says the rapid growth of e-commerce has flooded borders with high volumes of small, low value processes, posing major logistical and regulatory challenges for customs.

“Traditional models for processing, declaring and inspecting goods are struggling to keep leading to delays and resistance on compliance.

Both fiscally and in terms of security, like many administrations, South Africa had to urgently revisit our old pre e-commerce low value cost processing policy and our aim is to level the playing field between domestic and foreign vendors, close loopholes of potential tax abuse and ensure the immediate collection of import VAT.”