Introduce best practices in VAT refund processing to exporters by (i) clearing the stock of late refund claims, while meeting the statutory 90-day processing deadline for all claims filed in 2009; (ii) implementing risk-management approaches;4 (iii) implementing a forecasting system to anticipate refund levels so that funds are available to pay legitimate refund claims as they occur; and (iv) submitting legislation to parliament to strengthen penalties for false refund claims and pay interest on legitimate refunds not paid on time (interest will apply only to new claims filed after December 31, 2009).
At R1, this condition was split into 2 structural benchmarks -- one related to meeting the 90-day statutory deadline for processing VAT refund claims which will be monitored on a continuous basis, and the other related to submission to parliament for strengthening penalties for overstated VAT refunds, with a test date of end-September 2009.