The port of Durban is the first African port to have a United States customs post as part of the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the US embassy in Pretoria said on Wednesday.
South African Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner Pravin Gordhan and the commissioner of the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), Robert Bonner, officially opened the US customs post on December 2.
The CSI implementation is a result of the signing of a declaration of principles in June 2003.
In recent months the Sars and USCBP have engaged in intensive preparations towards gearing up security measures at South African ports to ensure the safety of exports from South and Southern Africa.
Durban is only the 17th port to be CSI compliant since the CSI was proposed in January 2002 in the wake of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.
CSI is operational in the following ports: Rotterdam, LeHavre, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Antwerp, Singapore, Yokohama, Hong Kong, Göteborg, Felixstowe, Genoa, La Spezia, Busan, Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax and Durban.
USCBP, now within the Department of Homeland Security, is continuing to implement CSI at major ports around the world. Under the CSI programme, a team of officers from USCBP are deployed to work with host nation counterparts to target high-risk cargo containers.
CSI is the only formal program in operation today that is designed to detect and deter terrorists from exploiting the vulnerabilities of containerised cargo.
CSI is also a reciprocal program. USCBP offers CSI-participating countries the opportunity to send their customs officers to major US ports to target cargo that is exported to their country via ocean containers.
USCBP will also share its information and pre-arrival data on a bilateral basis with its CSI partners. Sharing of information is intended to be a reciprocal process.
Under the reciprocity principle, the government of South Africa is planning to station Sars customs personnel in the US.
Japan and Canada currently station customs personnel in US ports as part of the CSI programme.
Japanese customs personnel are stationed at the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach. Canadian Customs personnel are stationed at Newark and Seattle.
Containerised shipping is a critical component of global trade, because most of the international trade moves or is transported in cargo containers. About 90% of all world cargo moves by container.
Almost half of incoming trade (by value) arrives in the US by containers aboard container ships. Nearly seven million cargo containers arrive and are offloaded at US seaports each year.
In the first nine months of this year, South African exports to the US rose by 14,3% year-on-year (y/y) to $3,333-billion. This was below overall export growth of 20,3% y/y. Exports to the US constituted 12,4% of total South African exports over this period.
In the first nine months of this year, American exports to South Africa rose by 2,4% y/y to $1,94-billion. This was below overall export growth of 2,8% y/y. Exports to South Africa constituted only 0,37% of total American exports over this period. — I-Net Bridge