On 10 July 2009, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) exempted the import duty on textured yarn and lace embroidery. Previously, the duties were at 10 and 5 percent.
 
Request for duty exemption
The tariff exemption was requested by the Textile Federation to the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC), which is in charge of evaluating tariff changes.
 
The ITAC recommended the reduction by arguing that "'the duties' have unnecessary cost implications for the downstream manufacturing industry, as these products are not manufactured or potentially manufactured domestically." The recommendation by ITAC was then approved by SARS.
 
Affected trading partners
The GTA retrieves its data on affected trading partners from UN Comtrade. However, for the year 2008, the database was not available to provide the affected trading partners for Botswana, Swaziland, and Lesotho.