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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

Structural transformation

By: Riaan de Lange 8th October 2021 Could this be the latest South African economic buzzword? Structural transformation, that is. In its publication, Structural Transformation in Developing Countries: Cross Regional Analysis, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) defines it thus: “The transition of an economy... →

HS 2022 now available – gratis

By: Riaan de Lange 1st October 2021 It’s not often that you get something without having to pay for it. Nowadays, if you are offered something for ‘free,’ it implies that you have to make some kind of commitment, financial or otherwise. There is an exception, though, and this is the World Customs Organisation's (WCO's) HS 2022.... →

Asycuda turns 40

By: Riaan de Lange 24th September 2021 Before breaking into a celebratory cheer, it bears explaining who, or what, Asycuda is. Asycuda – or the Automated System for Customs Data – is a computerised customs management system covering most foreign trade procedures that was designed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and... →

Scrap metal exportation

By: Riaan de Lange 17th September 2021 Introduced on May 10, 2013, through a trade policy directive, the Price Preference System (PPS) has been subject to numerous reviews and amendments in recent years. The most recent, which is the subject of this piece, was gazetted on September 3. This was the third for 2021, with the others... →

Customs data analysis

By: Riaan de Lange 10th September 2021 The World Customs Organisation’s (WCO’s) 2018 ‘Draft Guidance on Data Analytics’ describes data analytics as the process of analysing datasets to discover or uncover patterns, associations and anomalies from sets of structured or unstructured data and to draw practical conclusions. The document... →

National distress duty relief

By: Riaan de Lange 3rd September 2021 In the instalment of this column published on August 20 and titled ‘Looting Survey and Hotline’, I wrote about the announcement, on August 11, by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), of its survey on the impact of the recent looting on business operations, and of the... →

Pluperfect

By: Riaan de Lange 27th August 2021 Heard what happened when the Past, the Present and the Future walked into a bar? It was tense. There must have been some ‘tense’ engagements then at the 2021 Public Economics Winter School. If you are not familiar with this School of Economics, you should know that public economics, also known as... →

Looting survey and hotline

By: Riaan de Lange 20th August 2021 Looting is defined as the act of stealing or the taking of goods by force in the midst of a military, political or other social crisis, such as a war, a natural disaster or rioting. The proceeds of looting are called booty, loot, plunder, spoils or pillage. The Department of Trade, Industry and... →

Team South Africa?

By: Riaan de Lange 13th August 2021 Do the names Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson mean anything to you? No? What about 10.61, 10.74 and 10.76? These are the times recorded by the top three women athletes in the 100 m sprint final at the Tokyo Olympics on July 31. Quite remarkably, all three ladies... →

Customs inspections

By: Riaan de Lange 6th August 2021 The Cambridge Dictionary defines an inspection as “the act of looking at something carefully, or an official visit to a building or organisation to check that everything is correct and legal”. As the plural in the title suggests, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) employs various types of... →

The UK’s trade preferences

By: Riaan de Lange 30th July 2021 The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) on July 19 announced an open consultation in its efforts to design the country’s trade preferences scheme for developing nations, with comments due by September 12. The DIT has committed to considering the views of all sectors of society and... →

AEO – calling South Africa

By: Riaan de Lange 23rd July 2021 Harry S Truman, the thirty-third President of the US, famously said that “there is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know”. In similar vein, Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, said: “There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”... →

WCO’s Trade Tools platform

By: Riaan de Lange 16th July 2021 Over the years, I have written numerous articles and conducted extensive research on the cornerstones of customs, which the World Customs Organisation (WCO) calls the 'international trade actors'. If you need reminding, there are three: tariff classification, also called the Harmonised System... →

Sacu: the oldest of the RTAs

By: Riaan de Lange 9th July 2021 About 132 years ago, the world’s oldest customs union that is still operational was established – and that’s the South African Customs Union, which brought together the Orange River Colony (previously the Orange Free State) and the Transvaal Colony in 1889. In 1891, Basutoland, which is... →

SA’s competitiveness limbo

By: Riaan de Lange 2nd July 2021 It is June 17 as I find myself humming Chubby Checker’s Limbo Rock: “All around the limbo clock; Hey, let’s do the limbo rock; Limbo lower now; Limbo lower now; How low can you go . . .” A few minutes earlier, I had completed reviewing the International Institute for Management Development’s... →

Magnificent Seven Plus-1

By: Riaan de Lange 25th June 2021 If you have not been out for a while and need reminding, a ‘plus-1’ is an extra guest allowed on an invitation to a social event. Which begs the question – well, two in fact: Who was the ‘plus-1’, and where was this social event held? I’ll answer the latter question first: the event was held in... →

RAF Jekyll and Hyde

By: Riaan de Lange 18th June 2021 The American journalist James Surowiecki avers that, “in the business world, bad news is usually good news – for somebody else”. This is reminiscent of, but perhaps less dramatic than, the Dutch saying, De een z’n dood is de ander z’n brood, which translates as “One man’s death is another man’s... →

In the mirrel, Cyril

By: Riaan de Lange 11th June 2021 When last did you think about Irvin & Johnson’s Steakhouse Melts? The challenge with ageing, having grown up long before the Internet and Google, is that my memory is just as fragile as the Internet’s and Google’s when thinking back too far. Some days a memory, a partial memory, is triggered, but... →

Trade and competition policy

By: Riaan de Lange 4th June 2021 Over the course of two days in May, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) released two policy statements. Now, a policy is “a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by a government”, while a statement is “a definite or clear expression in writing”. So, what... →

Message in a bottle

By: Riaan de Lange 28th May 2021 There was a time, not so long ago, when people would send messages in bottles, even when in great distress. This is now frowned upon, since bottles constitute waste or litter that can harm the environment and marine life. Environmentalists now favour biodegradable drift cards and wooden blocks.... →

A digital levy

By: Riaan de Lange 21st May 2021 Ever been so bored that you took to contemplating the difference between a duty, a tax or a levy? You might also have pondered whether a tax is a duty that governments levy. Well, “therein lies the tale", as they would say in William Shakespeare’s day – or, as Shakespeare had it said in Romeo and... →

New trade barriers database

By: Riaan de Lange 14th May 2021 Did you know that trade policy barriers such as tariffs and other regulations account for at least 14% of total trade costs? Would you be interested in gaining a sense of the degree of restrictiveness of these measures, measuring how trade-policy barriers compare with other trade costs, and... →

When you hear the signal

By: Riaan de Lange 7th May 2021 It would cost you 47.5c. This begs the question: When last did you phone 1026? This should not be confused with 1023, the directory enquiries number you would dial when looking for a telephone number. In case you were wondering, both numbers are still in operation. The 1026 number is, in a way,... →

Gagarin’s poyekhali moment

By: Riaan de Lange 30th April 2021 Sixty years ago – on April 12, 1961 – Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly into space in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ (USSR’s) Vostok spacecraft, in a flight lasting 108 minutes, circling Earth for a little more than one orbit. I deliberately said ‘person’, but for those... →

SA’s recyclate ‘national flower’

By: Riaan de Lange 23rd April 2021 Since 1976, the King Protea has been this country’s national flower and also appears on the national coat of arms. Previously, it was the humble Suikerbossie. The King Protea was chosen because it symbolises South Africa's beauty and represents the “flowering of our potential as a nation in... →

Chewing and bubble gum tax

By: Riaan de Lange 16th April 2021 ‘Pigovian tax’, ‘externalities’, ‘negative externalities’, ‘elasticity of demand’, ‘awful self-inflicted impetigo’, ‘limitations’, ‘regulations’, ‘ban on the product’, ‘sugar tax’, ’drug’, and ‘food’. All these are the keywords on our brief journey to gain insight into chewing gum tax and bubble... →

Creative destruction

By: Riaan de Lange 9th April 2021 Nearly every episode of the 1966 classic television series, Mission Impossible – yes, it was on television before it became a movie franchise – started with the now iconic lines, “Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it” and “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck,... →

Operation Vulindlela

By: Riaan de Lange 2nd April 2021 When, on March 15, I saw a piece on the National Treasury’s website that was titled ‘Operation Vulindlela’ and marked ‘Latest News’, my gut feeling was that it was about a covert operation. In both Xhosa and Zulu, vulindlela means ‘make way’, and in the context of a Brenda Fassie song, it means:... →

Excise duties and the Laffer curve

By: Riaan de Lange 26th March 2021 Whoever said “what goes up must come down” never visited South Africa nor heard of excise duties nor understood their application in South Africa and the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) region. These words were, in fact, uttered by Sir Isaac Newton, widely recognised as one of the most... →

Fairtrade South Africa

By: Riaan de Lange 19th March 2021 When last, while shopping, did you pause to consider the packaging of the product you had selected? Are you one of those shoppers who turn the product around to contemplate the nutritional information? Does the information pertaining to fats or carbohydrates mean anything to you? Or does the... →

Whoa, livin’ on a prayer

By: Riaan de Lange 12th March 2021 Just under two weeks after the State of the Nation Address (SoNA), Finance Minister Tito Mboweni tabled the 2021/22 National Budget in the National Assembly – on February 24. At nearly half the length – 3 819 words – of the SoNA, it would have taken someone reading at the average adult reading... →

The rand’s Valentine’s Day

By: Riaan de Lange 5th March 2021 On February 14, the South African rand celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, having been introduced following the adoption of the recommendations of the Decimal Coinage Commission in 1958 to replace the British-styled pounds, shillings and pence with rands and cents. The currency code for the... →

State of the Nation Address

By: Riaan de Lange 26th February 2021 Too often, we read without comprehension. Let’s take the headline of this piece and break it down. A ‘state’ is a condition someone or something is in at a specific time, a ‘nation’ is a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture or language who inhabit a particular country... →

Reflections on Brexit

By: Riaan de Lange 19th February 2021 On July 11, 2016, then Conservative Party leader and future UK Prime Minister Theresa Mary said in one of her speeches: “Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it.” Brexit is a portmanteau of ‘British’ and ‘exit’ and refers to the UK’s referendum decision to leave the European... →

Nudiustertian

By: Riaan de Lange 12th February 2021 It is a word that I have always wanted to use as the headline of this column. It is a word that, as I type, is glowing in red; not even the spellchecker recogniseS it. It simply means relating to the day before yesterday. Two days before I wrote this piece, on January 27, the International... →

Are we HS 2022 ready?

By: Riaan de Lange 5th February 2021 Without wanting to sound too dramatic, it is not, apologies to James Carville, “the economy, stupid”, but rather “international trade, stupid”. As the French economist Claude-Frédéric Bastiat once remarked, “if goods don’t cross borders, armies will”. Which begs the question: Are you prepared for... →

SA’s economic policy

By: Riaan de Lange 29th January 2021 Do you consider South Africa’s economic policy to be a puzzle or a mystery? Should you resort to your favourite search engine and search for ‘South Africa’s economic policy’, the eighth result would point you to a puzzle – Dan Rodrick’s 2008 article, ‘Understanding South Africa’s economic... →

Reflections on the AfCFTA

By: Riaan de Lange 22nd January 2021 January 1 saw the introduction of a fifth preferential rates of ordinary customs duty column in Schedule No 1, Part 1, of the South African Customs and Excise Act, 1964. It adds to the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and... →

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