An explorative study into the effectiveness of a customs operation and its impact on trade
Date
2018Author
Hoffman, Alwyn J.
Venter, Willem C.
Grater, Sonia
Maree, Juantia
Liebenberg, David
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
There is a lack of overall efficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa’s logistics systems, with a
large contributor to this problem being inefficient customs processes and unnecessary
customs delays. Many comparisons have been drawn between the levels of efficiency
of different countries and regions, especially in recent trade facilitation research, and
some models have been developed to demonstrate how the efficiency of a customs
operation can potentially be improved. The development of effective policies, strategies
and operational procedures, supported by business intelligence and predictive models,
however, depends on an in-depth understanding of the reasons for long delays in
the customs process. There are multiple factors impacting the customs and logistics
process; in order to progress towards improved solutions it is essential to identify the
areas of worst performance, their common denominators and the underlying causes that
contribute to low observed performance. This requires exploratory analysis of a large
set of data representative of an overall customs operation. This article describes the first
attempt to analyse transaction-level data and derive exploratory statistics representative
of customs operations as implemented in South Africa. The most important process
outcomes from the perspective of both trade and customs are defined, the key input
factors are identified, and performance measures are extracted from data exchanged
between the customs authority and cargo consignors during the period September
2014 to September 2016. The time duration per category for the completion of the
customs process was measured, as well as the effectiveness of the customs authority
in screening consignments for inspection. The study indicates that, for the selected
dataset, of all shipments delayed by customs, more than 90 per cent were delayed
unnecessarily, indicating inefficient risk identification in the South African customs
process. This study highlights the need for improved customs processes in the southern
African context to ensure more efficient trade
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/31423http://worldcustomsjournal.org/archive/volume-12-number-2-septmber-2018/