Includes bibliographical references / This study sought to clarify the role of Customs Risk Management (CRiM) in facilitating cross-border trade at Beit Bridge border post from 2001 to 2014. Qualitative methods of survey questionnaire and face-to-face interviewing techniques were used to gather primary data. Secondary data was collected from the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA)'s internal sources such as Asycuda System and internal reports. Externally, sources like internet and research findings from other researchers in the same field were used. An in-depth literature review was done so as to simplify the research problem. Data analysis and presentation was done using diagrams, graphs and tables where applicable. The following research findings were then critically discussed in light of the literature reviewed: On the role of CRiM Training in cross-border trade facilitation, the study revealed that an overwhelming majority had not received any form of specialized training on CRiM or some form of work-related CRiM Training in the last 2 years. There exist a strong demand for CRiM Training in risk intelligence gathering, risk audit techniques and risk profiling. A majority, 93% of the respondents confirmed that ZIMRA's Strategic Plan makes some form of reference to CRiM. However, 73% of this majority, indicated that there is a greater and urgent need for management to provide operational staff with CRiM tactical implementation guidelines for easy of enforcement on the ground. 87% said the main purpose of applying CRiM in Customs procedures was mainly to maximize revenue collection ahead of trade facilitation. 76% expressed the same view with regards to use of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) in the procedures. 100% said the level of co-operation on exchange of ICT-based risk related information exchange between ZIMRA and other government departments was almost nil. In response to these findings, the study recommends that ZIMRA: continuously offer CRiM Training to its operational staff over short periods of time in a single year, effectively make use of CRiM techniques such as intelligence gathering, risk profiling, risk auditing techniques in identifying high risk cargo, and to eradicate lack of confidence in the flexible use of existing ICT systems among staff by giving them further training. According to this study, benefits of implementing these recommendations will be: increased revenue collection, reduced border clearance time, reduced costs of compliance, rationalized customs controls and predictability in the nature and level of controls all in the best interest of trade facilitation.

The expansion of global trade, especially trade in intermediate products, compels goods to cross borders multiple times before assembly. This phenomena requires better trade facilitation mechanisms in conveyancing goods and people across borders. The World Customs Organization, among many other organizations, has been in the fore-front of promoting these trade facilitation techniques. This qualitative case study has an objective of analyzing the current trade facilitation techniques used at Kasumbalesa. It also aims at pointing out any outdated customs procedures. During the study, data was collected using questionnaires and oral interviews. Secondary data was also collected from publications of the World Customs Organization, World Bank and the World Trade Organization, among other sources. In addition, observational methods were also used to collect data. The case study focuses on Kasumbalesa as a representative entry/exit point in Zambia. Consequently, identification of challenges faced by goods and people crossing Kasumbalesa can help streamline operations at other Zambian borders.

The recent adoption of the Trade Facilitation Agreement by WTO members in 2014 renewed the global impetus to ease the movement of goods. Developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa have joined the global community in this regard. It has been noted that although tariffs in developing countries have been lowered, numerous non-tariff barriers and non-tariff measures are stifling trade. Cumbersome border processes have added avoidable costs to trade. In this study, we examine the challenges being faced in Zimbabwe in the transboundary movement of goods. The study makes use the World Bank database on Trading Across Border, Logistics Performance Indicators, and the Ad Valorem Equivalent by the World Bank's Economic and Social Community for Asia and Pacific. The data is compared with South Africa, Zambia, OECD High Income Countries, and East Asia. The findings show that, it is a huge challenge to move goods in Zimbabwe. In other words, doing business with Zimbabwe is not for the faint at heart. These challenges emanate from exorbitant administrative fees, high document requirements, and time delay constraints. These costly non-tariff barriers present a costly murky trade protectionism. The entire logistics chain and infrastructure system need to be revamped to improve reliability and minimise trade costs. When compared to ad valorem equivalent, Zimbabwe trade costs with South Africa and Zambia in agriculture are in excess of 100%, while those for the manufactured goods average 65%. The high trade costs in agriculture are high mainly due to excess requirements in terms of processes and procedures to move goods across borders. Combining trade costs data with specific knowledge on trade facilitation, logistics and trade policy will provide a comprehensive diagnosis that will help to prioritize reform packages that carry maximum impact. In light of these findings, the research recommends to customs officials and government policy makers, areas to address in the entire trade facilitation process that will bring huge impact in terms of removal of border inefficiencies, minimising of trade costs, and improvement of the logistics chain. These recommendations range from the establishment of single window system, integrated border management, and one stop border posts as part of the entire process under trade facilitation.

During the period of the years 1952 to 2009, there have been only two automotive piston manufacturers in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). SACU is comprised of the following five member states; South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland. Owing to the SACU agreement, these countries have enjoyed fairly good trade flows in goods and services amongst each other. The role of the abovementioned piston manufacturers was the provision of piston components to engine assembling companies in the SACU region as well as for sale to the aftermarket.

Includes bibliographical references. / Coordinating and organising divergent stakeholders to undertake action to improve a shared situation of concern is an increasingly perplexing problem. Industry, government and academia operate in siloes, make decisions at different speeds, have disparate worldviews and value sets, and do not share the same priorities and concerns. Whilst meetings between these stakeholders are not uncommon, progressing these conversations beyond ‘talk’ to achieve commitment to act, requires purposeful effort. This study investigates the persistent and relevant problem of how to design purposeful action, in a ‘wicked’ problem situation that cannot be solved by any one stakeholder operating alone, and in which the stakeholders do not share the same interpretation of the problem situation. Although such situations are common in cluster development, the literature on cluster development does not offer solutions as to how to design purposeful action, nor does it provide insight as to why attempts to intervene in systemic problems can result in a failure to improve the problem situation.

Information Systems in generally acknowledged to be a complex field and many studies over time have quoted significant failure statistics. This paper seeks to answer the question - How to more appropriately evaluate and select information systems design (ISD) methods that better enable successful design outcomes. The research covers literature relating analysis and design, information systems design methods, complexity, ontology and conceptual modelling and how they relate to ISD. This research was conducted within a larger national research project aiming to improve organising practices within IT in organisations. To this end the research followed a participatory action research approach underpinned by systems thinking theoretical perspective. What emerged out of this study was the appreciation for the bricolage that takes during an analysis or design effort - this perspective highlighted the following factors that can enable improved method evaluation and selection, namely: Epistemology, Contextual Influences and Social Action. These factors are shown to operate in dialectic process that if engaged with can provide insight into what an appropriate method can be.

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (hereafter referred to as "the Constitution"), outlines the different roles and functions of the arms of government, namely the Executive, Judiciary and Legislature. In terms of international agreements, Section 231 of the Constitution provides the parameters within which the Executive and the Legislature are responsible for when entering into international agreements. The Executive is responsible for negotiating and signing all international agreements, which must then be approved by the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces in order to be ratified. Furthermore, the Constitution requires the Legislature to oversee the work of the Executive. In this regard, Parliament, as the representative of the people of South Africa, has a duty to ensure that even international agreements will benefit the citizenry and not undermine national objectives. However, due to the democratic principle of separation of powers, Parliament has little control over the outcomes of the negotiations which the Executive undertakes on behalf of the nation. Signed international agreements may not always be in the national interest. In these instances, Parliament cannot alter the terms of the agreement. It can at best approve this for ratification with reservations or reject it once it has been tabled. Several challenges arise in relation to the approval for ratification of international agreements. This is primarily related to Parliament's capacity and the time available to consider signed agreements, and its knowledge and understanding of the content and implications of international agreements. This study, therefore, considers how Parliament can effectively oversee developments during international trade negotiations. This is to circumvent situations where the trade agreements do not support national strategic objectives. A grounded theory approach was used to develop a theory on how to strengthen Parliament's oversight role during international trade negotiations. Grounded theory is a qualitative research method, which uses a mainly inductive approach. Data was gathered through conversational interviewing with a number of stakeholders such as Members of Parliament and parliamentary officials, as well as technical and nontechnical literature. These were analysed to develop key concepts or variables. Next, a literature review was conducted to determine the parent body of knowledge within which the research study falls. This process yielded further variables. It also assisted in determining the linkages between the key concepts. Finally, I undertook a theory building process to determine the relationships between the key concepts and the key concern variable. From the analysis, this study proposes that the Executive and Members of Parliament need to understand the importance and relevance of holding the Executive accountable for its actions in relation to international trade negotiations. Once this is clearly established, there will be an incentive to develop institutional capacity to perform oversight over this type of Executive action. This enhanced capacity will lead to more effective oversight over the Executive's involvement during international trade negotiations and thus greater accountability by the Executive to ensure that these negotiations support national strategic objectives.

Includes bibliographical references / The transport sector is critical to the performance of various sectors of the economy both trade in goods and services hinges on an efficient and reliable transport services sector. South Africa has undertaken limited commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the transport sector. South Africa's transport sector in general is controlled by the government through state owned firms. The transport sector is competitive relative to Africa, however, relative to developed economies, the transport sector lags behind in terms of efficiency and cost (DBSA, 2012). Inefficiencies result in increased transaction costs and impede the overall competitiveness and economic performance of the country. The transport sector and other services sectors in general are mainly governed by domestic legislation. Barriers to trade in services may be located in laws and regulations of individual economies often referred to as behind the border measures such as license, technical, educational, registration and local ownership requirements and as such are more difficult to address than barriers to goods. (Hartzenberg, 2012). To identify these measures it is important to undertake an assessment of the legislation governing sector. This study analyses both vertical and horizontal legislation governing the sector. This study aims to assess the level of liberalisation of South Africa's transport sector to gauge the presence of trade restrictive measures in the sector that would limit access, establishment and or operation by foreign service suppliers. This is done through an analysis of domestic legislation governing the transport sector and its related sub - sectors. This effectively entails a comparison between actual commitments as reflected in South Africa's GATS schedule of specific commitments and applied policy as reflected in legislation. Data from such a study provides valuable technical information to trade negotiators regarding the policy space available allowing them to develop and formulate informed negotiating positions. The methodology employed in this study is adapted from the World Bank's Regulatory Assessment of Services, Trade and Investment (RASTI) and has been adapted for purposes of this study. A country, prior to engaging in a services negotiation should conduct an assessment of the level of liberalisation of each service sector to gauge its competitive strengths and weaknesses. Such an assessment entails an assessment of the country's regulation to determine if such regulation is overly burdensome to the extent that it inhibits competition and trade in services in an economy. Once such an assessment is concluded, a large number of countries have found that domestic regulatory reforms are necessary for effective participation in services negotiations. (Molinuevo & Sáez, 2014). The importance for such assessments often referred to as audits, have been confirmed as the most effective way of ensuring that regulations are not restrictive of trade. (Molinuevo & Sáez, 2014). Moreover, periodic regulatory audits serve the purpose of identifying discriminatory measures and minimising discriminatory effects that have the effect of increasing costs and discriminating against foreign service suppliers. A comparison of the liberalisation of South Africa's transport sector in terms of the actual commitments (as reflected in the GATS services schedule) against the applied domestic regulation is an important exercise in view of the discussions at the WTO level about the liberalisation of services and at a regional level in view of South Africa's regional and continental aspirations to promote regional integration. The transport sector has been identified as a priority sector in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) invol ving, COMESA, E AC and SADC. In the TFTA negotiations, even though the first phase focused on trade in goods, the second phase will address trade in services, including transport services. Negotiations in SADC based on the Protocol on Trade in Services are ongoing and wil l include transport services. A study of this nature is important for undertaking and formulating negotiating positions for trade in services and may be replicated across various service sectors.

Includes bibliographical references / The study examines the export tax as a trade policy tool in Malawi, with a specific focus on the timber industry. This study was motivated by the sudden imposition of an export tax on timber trade by the Malawi Government in 2011, as a reactive policy to an upsurge in timber exports from Malawi. The objective of the study was, therefore, to investigate why the Malawi Government decided to impose the export tax, and whether this trade policy tool has been effective in meeting the objectives. In this regard, the study was done in a broad manner to cover both the theoretical aspects of the export tax, as a trade policy tool, and the practical realities about the Malawi Government's management of the forestry sector and the timber trading in an environment where the Government decided to join the global rules-based trading system. The study used a descriptive explanatory design, employing qualitative methods that involved the use of questionnaires and analysis of the existing literature. The results revealed that an export tax is a duty that is applied on products before they are exported in order to achieve certain objectives, which include government revenue collection, domestic price stabilization, achieving food security, or promoting value addition, hence, industrial development. The review of the literature has demonstrated that care should be exercised when adopting this policy tool because export taxes can be trade-restricting and welfare diminishing on a country, or can constitute a "beggar-thy-neighbour" policy when not properly designed. It is in consideration of such consequences that it has now become fashionable for modern free trade agreements (FTAs) to include provisions on export taxes. For instance, the SADC Protocol on Trade includes Article 5 which prohibits Member States from applying any export duties on goods for export to other Member States. However, from the study, it has been established that if the export taxes are properly designed and implemented, they can boost Government revenue and catalyse industrial productivity. In this respect, evidence has shown that the Government imposed the export tax on timber to curb influx of foreign traders who have been buying the timber because it was cheaper that the timber found in the neighbouring countries. This was a reactionary use of export tax as a trade policy tool, rather than taking a proactive approach to ensure that the Government achieves the policy objectives. Thus, the available literature has shown that the Government could combine the various objectives for introducing the export tax on timber. In this regard, the efficacy of the export taxes depends on the creation of proper linkages with other policy initiatives, such as existence of local knowledge, technological development and processing capacity for increased local production to meet high standards of the international market. Thus, while the Malawi Government can maintain the export tax on timber, it should be done with a very clear objectives and timeframe for using it as a trade policy tool. The Government can combine a number of policy objectives, such as, revenue generation and use the proceeds to undertake re-afforestation programme and protect the environment while, at the same time, encouraging value addition or encouraging global value chains. Such initiatives have the capacity to generate economic gains because as the country builds the productive capacities, there is employment creation and use of other domestically produced inputs or raw materials. In this respect, it is important that the pricing of timber or forestry products should also reflect the appropriate or true economic rent, which should be levied from the use of the natural resource. The study has, therefore, revealed that the Malawi Government should review the method of collecting the export taxes to ensure maximum compliance, curb corruption, and avoid loss of foreign exchange earnings. The Government should devise other ways of collecting the export taxes than at the points of exit or the designated borders. One recommendation is for the Government to place the Malawi Revenue Authority officials at the sites where the timber is harvested, and make such sites as the collection points. More importantly, the study recommends that Government should conduct civic education campaigns targeted towards timber producers and exporters, highlighting the benefits of the export taxes to avoid illegal trade and corruption. The study has further revealed that it is possible for the Government to increase the stumpage fee to the levels that would be comparable to the stumpage fees in other countries such as Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania.

Includes bibliographical references / The purpose of this study was to analyse the Automotive Industry in Southern Africa, to assess how best Lesotho can contribute to this supply chain. This analysis was done to better understand the sector, to identify Lesotho's potential to produce car seat covers for South African automotive assembly plants, and find the best trade policies and programmes to support value chains in the sector. The plan was to assess the possibility for Lesotho made automotive components manufacturers to supply the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs - the main automotive assembly plants), and use the South African Automotive Industry as the entry point for the Lesotho components to penetrate the Regional Automotive Value Chain. The main focus of this study was the manufacturing of car-seat covers to supply the seven Original Equipment Manufacturers namely: Volkswagen, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Daimler Chrysler, Ford and Mercedes Benz. The impact of Motor Industry Development Programme (MIDP) and Automotive Production and Development Programme (APDP) on the industry was assessed. The impact of the APDP on relocation of components manufacturers to other Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries was assessed, Lesotho being used as a case study. It set out to find out if Lesotho firms have the potential to contribute to the automotive value chains through manufacture of car seat covers.