By Ziyah News Network
THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) has reverted to manually clearing goods after its system collapsed and has failed to make any online clearances for the last three days.
While no official communication on the cause of the challenge has been made insiders suspect the challenge is a result of system hacking.
The online failure is reported to have spread to Taxes and all other Zimra online payment systems.
Corporate Affairs Manager Gladman Njanji late on Saturday issued a statement admitting there was a challenge and advised its clients on available mitigatogatory measures.
The notice titled “Public Notice: System Challenges Affecting Customs Clearance”, the notice advised importers to remain in contact with Customs and Excise while remedial solutions were being interrogated.
“The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) advises its clients and stakeholders that intermittent connectivity challenges are affecting the availability of some of its systems, resulting in delays in some customs clearance transactions.”
“Affected clients are encouraged to remain in contact with their clearing agents and the relevant Customs offices for guidance on available contingency arrangements,” said the notice.
“Any inconvenience is sincerely regretted and efforts are underway to restore full services as soon as possible.”
Customs and Excise operations nationwide were abruptly stopped and have been on a standstill now for three days after the major system breakdown that rendered useless all payments systems.
Reports from other ports said queues of haulage trucks with goods destined for Zimbabwe were building.
“They are calling those with perishables, fuels and gases for manual clearing,” said one shipping clerk. We have been unable to pay duty or any other charges,” said a shipping agent.
Zimra officials in Harare held meetings with shipping houses representatives to explore continuity ways as the challenges continued.
A number of resolutions were agreed in one such meeting where shipping agents were required to bring physical proof from their banks where duty was paid into the Customs system.
“For duty paid but not reflecting agents should approach ZIMRA for release under a Report Order, supported by Proof of Payment (POP), dummy entries and/or duty schedules. For imports pending assessment or registration releases may be considered upon payment of a deposit covering customs duty only, under a Report Order, supported by the relevant duty schedules and/or dummy entries,” said one of the resolutions.
It also said for transit, bonded warehouse and export consignments, these will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Agents were encouraged to engage the relevant ZIMRA offices and Station Management to implement these arrangements.
While it is not clear what caused the challenges, it is suspected they were a result if possible hacking from some affected by new measures imposed to curb rampant registration of vehicles smuggled at rhe Central Vehicle Registry.
Zimra upgraded its system Asycuda, linking with CVR, according to sources, and after a succesful launch, the system collapsed after a few days.