SARS drops deferment payment bombshell
Industry is gearing up for another fight with the South African Revenue Service – and this time billions of rands are at stake. Sars earlier this month published a proposal for a fixed deferment period of one calendar month to apply to all deferment account holders,...
Port Tariff Respite
The Ports Regulator has once again restrained Transnet National Ports Authority’s (TNPA’s) tariff-increasing ambitions. Although TNPA requested a tariff increase of 9.47% for the 2015/16 tariff year, the regulator has only approved an overall increase in average...
Trade logistics ignored in budget
Anyone reading the 2015 budget speech of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene would be hard pressed to identify any commitment to increasing South Africa’s competitiveness through investment in the total logistics value chain. Following president Jacob Zuma’s lead in his...
Salvation in sight for “disempowered” Africa?
There are high hopes about the impact of the Grand Inga hydropower project which is expected to go a long way in alleviating the power crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Anita George, a senior director with the World Bank Group, the project in the Congo River...
Industry to appeal new overloading regulations
The main representative bodies in the freight industry intend to appeal to the minister of transport to redraft the contentious consignor/consignee regulation (part of the National Ports Act) – which legal advisers have described as “very badly drafted, and probably...
High hopes for improvement at Pier 2
The latest FTW update of gate moves at the Port of Durban’s container terminals has revealed a significant improvement for Pier 1, but that Pier 2 has been a mess recently. However, according to Kevin Martin, chairman of the Durban harbour carriers division of the SA...
Battle brewing over costly hi-cube ruling
Durban HeadA battle could be brewing as the container industry prepares to take on the department of transport (DoT) about what it describes as an “unnecessary and extremely costly” ruling from the authorities. At issue is the department’s demand for the country’s container transport industry to get rid of all the 1.5-1.6 metre flat-deck and modern skeletal trailers currently used by contractors to transport the hi-cube containers – and replace them with lower, 1.25-1.3m old skeletal trailers, or the costly modern equivalent.