Tuesday, February 03, 2009

SARS makes a R18 billion “mistake”

Business Day reports that an “extra R18 billion” was added to South Africa’s trade deficit last year.

How did the mistake occur?

“Research by economists at Tariff & Trade Intelligence and IHS Global Insight, confirmed by the Bureau for Economic Policy and Analysis at the University of Pretoria, shows the shortfall may have been hugely overstated last year as SARS began to include in data gold imports for further processing but not subsequent gold exports.”

As cock-ups go, this is pretty serious, rivalling the miscalculation of the inflation rate by Stats SA a few years back. The problem is it is nigh impossible to quantify the damage exactly.

It just shouldn’t happen in the first place.

3 Opinion(s):

Anonymous said...

Much like the crime stats, the truth will be hidden. The deficit is the number that can sink the country and chase investors away faster than Malema.

They are lying of course!

islandshark said...

Exactly

Anonymous said...

Since when does South Africa import gold for processing?

Since when does South Africa export beneficiated gold?