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Riaan de Lange

This economic and trade-focused column is prepared by Riaan de Lange – riaan@tariffandtrade.co.za. The views expressed in this column are the author's personal views

Excise duty hikes a given

By: Riaan de Lange 8th March 2024 How many fingers do you have? A hint, when pointing your finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you, as the adage goes. Want to reconsider your answer once you have finished staring at your hand? What about the thumb, could it be that, as it is pointing to the sky, it is not... →

Paltry graft loot recovery

By: Riaan de Lange 1st March 2024 Corruption is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “illegal, bad or dishonest behaviour, especially by people in positions of power”. Wikipedia describes it as “a form of dishonesty or a criminal offence which is undertaken by a person or an organisation which is entrusted in a position of... →

And the actual?

By: Riaan de Lange 23rd February 2024 ‘Actual’ means to exist in fact – in other words, to be real. There are not many occasions, during the course of the year, when I despair at having to write a piece for this column. The State of the Nation Address (SoNA) is my only actual annual despair. Why are not all the figures in the SoNA... →

You’ll be back?

By: Riaan de Lange 16th February 2024 This is is not a guarantee that The Terminator, aka Arnold Schwarzenegger, will be back. You might recall that “I'll be back” is a catchphrase associated with Mr S (I’m cognisant of my character count limit), which was made famous in the 1984 film The Terminator. Surprisingly, Schwarzenegger’s... →

HS exploratory study

By: Riaan de Lange 9th February 2024 The World Customs Organisation (WCO) on January 18, announced the publication of the public version of its ‘Interim Report on the Exploratory Study on a Possible Strategic Review of the Harmonised System (HS)’, as well as its Presentation, ‘An Introductory to the Exploratory Study on the Possible... →

Transfer pricing adjustments

By: Riaan de Lange 2nd February 2024 On January 19, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) released its proposed draft amendments to the rules of the Customs and Excise Act, 1964, which take into account the effects of transfer pricing adjustments on customs valuation. Comment on the draft amendments is due by February 9 and must... →

Make a difference

By: Riaan de Lange 26th January 2024 Want to make a difference? Well, if you are still looking to fill your New Year’s resolution list, this might be for you. Should you require a bit of motivation, or a tagline to support your quest to make a difference, you could consider the narrator’s words in the opening sequence of the 1980s... →

A new tax dawn?

By: Riaan de Lange 19th January 2024 Ever heard of the acronym OEEC? It stands for Organisation for European Economic Cooperation. Does it ring a bell? Well, what about OECD, the acronym for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development? The OEEC, established on April 16, 1948, transformed into the OECD on September 30,... →

Sheikhs on a plane

By: Riaan de Lange 15th December 2023 Why do bad movies linger in one’s mind? In two words, the answer is 'negative bias', and in three it’s 'positive-negative asymmetry'. According to the researcher Randy Larsen, negative events and experiences not only imprint more quickly but also linger longer than positive ones, which could... →

I owe, I owe: JET

By: Riaan de Lange 8th December 2023 So, a partnership no more? To provide context, the National Treasury’s November 21 media statement is titled ‘Bilateral loan agreements with the World Bank, Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to support South Africa’s just energy transition”,... →

Nothing new in Customs

By: Riaan de Lange 1st December 2023 My mother constantly reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun. When, as a small boy, she first told me this, I was very sceptical, reasoning that there had been no motor vehicles before January 29, 1886, for example. Truth be told, I did not know the exact date at the time but, still,... →

Traveller management system

By: Riaan de Lange 24th November 2023 “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble…” If you need reminding, these are the opening verses of the song of the three witches in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. What, you may ask, does the song have to do with the column? The answer lies in ‘traveller’, or, more... →

Customs and port authorities

By: Riaan de Lange 17th November 2023 One of the most intriguing aspects of life, for me, is the origin of words. In the customs and international trade environment, in particular, words are used mostly devoid of their meaning. This is reminiscent of Irish rock band U2’s 1987 song, Where the Streets Have No Name, which, if I had to... →

Sacu’s fifth report card

By: Riaan de Lange 10th November 2023 A trade policy review, or TPR, is a review mandated in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreements, in terms of which its member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. All WTO member countries are subject to the process, the frequency of which... →

A step forward?

By: Riaan de Lange 3rd November 2023 Does Africa’s proposed enhancement of trade efficiency and promotion of economic growth in the Tripartite Free Trade Area – comprising the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, (Comesa), the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community – represent a small step... →

Is white chocolate a chocolate?

By: Riaan de Lange 27th October 2023 Is there such a thing as white chocolate? I remember, while growing up, my grandmother, who owned a roadhouse and a café, telling me that there was no such thing. She told me that white chocolate was a combination of sweeteners and condense milk; thus, it was a con for it to be called chocolate.... →

Egg-spectations

By: Riaan de Lange 20th October 2023 What word best rhymes with ‘chicken’? it's ‘sicken’, of course. How appropriate then that this piece is about a ‘sicken’ chicken. Let me apologise in advance if I am sickening you with all the articles on chicken published in this column this year. I know that you have hardly had time to digest... →

Tyre import rumblings

By: Riaan de Lange 13th October 2023 In the Government Gazette of September 29, the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (Itac) extended an invitation for comment, by October 13, on the proposed introduction of an import permit condition for wheel imports. The importation of both road wheels and wheel rims... →

Mirrors and dumping duties

By: Riaan de Lange 6th October 2023 Mirror, mirror against the wall, which country has had an investigation for the extension of an antidumping duty launched against it? “Well, the People’s Republic of China, of course”, the mirror replies. The question that you should really be asking is whether it is an ordinary mirror, or a... →

A natural disaster

By: Riaan de Lange 29th September 2023 Alas, this article is not about the state of the South African economy; if it was, it would have been titled a ‘national disaster’. Instead, it focuses on the customs treatment of natural disasters. On September 12, the World Customs Organisation (WCO), the intergovernmental organisation... →

VAT revamp

By: Riaan de Lange 22nd September 2023 Earlier this month, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) published its ‘Discussion Paper on Value-Added Tax (VAT) Modernisation’, and those who wish to submit comments should do so by October 31. VAT was introduced in South Africa on September 29, 1991, replacing General Sales Tax, and is the... →

In knead of help

By: Riaan de Lange 15th September 2023 Why did the person sell yeast? To raise some dough. Well, in the case of Anchor Yeast (this year’s centurion) it appears that it might well not be raising enough dough, prompting it to approach government as it is in knead of help (pun intended). In the Government Gazette of August 18, the... →

Reflections on expanded BRICS

By: Riaan de Lange 8th September 2023 Please – ‘b’, a consonant – ‘r’, a vowel - ‘i’, a consonant – ‘c’, a vowel – ‘s’, a vowel – 'i’, a consonant – ‘s’, a vowel – ‘u’, a vowel – ‘e’, a vowel – ‘a’, and a vowel – ‘e’, which displays as ‘bricsisueae’. It would have been if you were a contestant on the long-running British gameshow... →

BRICS rank and file

By: Riaan de Lange 1st September 2023 On August 22, the BRICS circus rolled into town – into Johannesburg, to be exact – and was set to remain there for three days. Why the city, named after two surveyors, Johann Friedrich Bernhard Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert, in 1896 still exists is quite a mystery. Maybe the name eGoli... →

Camera

By: Riaan de Lange 25th August 2023 I wanted to have ‘Lights, camera, action’ as the headline of this article but then it dawned on me that there is hardly any electricity to power the lights; its supply is intermittent at best. As for ‘action’, well, there is supposedly a plan – an Energy Action Plan (EAP). Actually, it is a plan... →

Fowl play

By: Riaan de Lange 18th August 2023 How time flies! As I sat down to write this piece, it was the first day of August. The date may not be of significance to you, but this will largely depend on whether you have been counting down the time, waiting for a Ministerial promise to a domestic industry being fulfilled. If it all sounds a... →

Metal export restrictions

By: Riaan de Lange 11th August 2023 For many years, I have spent Friday afternoons ‘eagerly’ scrutinising the Government Gazette. I contend that most of the gazettes are published simply for landfill and recycling purposes, as they hardly qualify as favourite reading material. However, I can assure you that, in all my years of... →

Signed languages

By: Riaan de Lange 4th August 2023 South Africa now has a twelfth official language, following the historic signing of the Sign Language Bill into law by President Cyril Mamaphosa on July 19. South Africa is the fourth African country to do so – following Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda – and the forty-first country internationally.... →

Agoa-less?

By: Riaan de Lange 28th July 2023 Exactly 701 days! That’s the time that remained, at the time of writing, before the expiry of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), the legislation introduced on May 18, 2000, to assist the economies of 44 sub-Saharan African countries and to improve their economic relations with the US.... →

Frozen in time

By: Riaan de Lange 21st July 2023 Exactly 1 589 days previously at the time of writing, the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (Itac) had published in the Government Gazette – on February 22, 2019 – its first two tariff applications for comment, with a closing date of March 22, 2019. The application of... →

ATA Carnet turns 60

By: Riaan de Lange 14th July 2023 On June 22, the World Customs Organisation (WCO) joined the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of its ATA Carnet at the thirteenth World Chambers Congress in Geneva, Switzerland – the home of the World Trade Organisation. As the world’s biggest... →

Flickering economic growth

By: Riaan de Lange 7th July 2023 On June 15, the Africa department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a note titled ‘South Africa's Economy Loses Momentum Amid Record Power Cuts’. It evoked the words a former economics professor of mine would utter if a student didn’t apply his or her mind: “Sir/Madam, you have a... →

Greedflation

By: Riaan de Lange 30th June 2023 Inflare is Latin for ‘to blow into’ or ‘inflate’. No prize for guessing the word from which inflation is derived, but can you guess where, when and why the word came into being? The US would have been a safe guess; as for the year, it was 1838, and the word referred to the inflating of a... →

PROVE IT

By: Riaan de Lange 23rd June 2023 There is an age-old rhyming Russian proverb, “doveryay, no proveryay”, which became hugely popular in English in the 1980s as “trust but verify”. This was after Suzanne Massie, a scholar of Russian history, had taught it to the then US President, Ronald Reagan, who used it on several occasions... →

Another bad report card

By: Riaan de Lange 16th June 2023 I wrote piece on June 6, which was reminiscent of the days gone by when your teacher gave you your school report in a sealed envelope addressed to you parents. Back then, you had the power to delay its delivery somewhat. I also remember a time when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released... →

Sounds like a melody

By: Riaan de Lange 9th June 2023 What if government policies were like a musician’s song catalogue? You would expect the songs that made it on to the album to be the musician’s best efforts. They would have to be even more so if they made it to the A side. But then, making it to the album does not guarantee that a song would be... →

Standardising ‘nationality’

By: Riaan de Lange 2nd June 2023 I recall a time when, as a much younger me, I was in absolute awe of centenary celebrations. It was a time when neither anyone known to me nor the possessions that my family owned had turned 100 years old. I vividly recall how I had searched for things that would shortly turn three digits. I... →

Let us . . .

By: Riaan de Lange 26th May 2023 Let us do what? How about “Let’s grow South Africa together”? If you need reminding, this was the title of the governing party’s 2019 election manifesto. I recalled it when I saw government’s invitation to the Presidential Imbizo on May 19, with the slogan ‘Leave no one behind’, or LNOB. LNOB is... →

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