SA Revenue Services' (SARS) commissioner Pravin Gordhan and the Chinese minister general for the Administration of Customs (GACC) Xinsheng Mu, have signed an agreement to strengthen bilateral cooperation between the two countries' customs administrations.
Mr Gordhan said the agreement, which has been endorsed by South African deputy finance minister Jabu Moleketi and China's ambassador to South Africa Guijin Liu, was a legal basis for the two administrations to combat smuggling.

Mr Mu indicated that South Africa was his country's largest trading partner in Africa, adding that the Chinese government would continue to strengthen relations with African countries, and South Africa in particular.

According to SARS, China is currently the eighth largest destination for South Africa's export market. South Africa mainly exports raw material such as aluminium, platinum and chrome to China and it imports processed goods such as machinery, clothing, textiles and footwear.

The two countries have also agreed to a pilot project to manage the trade between them. This will entail the advanced electronic submission of customs data and will allow for the joint detection of high risk.

The agreement also supports the MoU signed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Thabo Mbeki in June to restrict clothing and textile imports from China into South Africa in a bid to remedy the trade imbalance between the two countries. The South African government has since announced that the quota system to cut down on the amount of imported clothing and textile from China would be implemented at the beginning of next year.

The move will affect around 31 product categories in the clothing and textile industry.