The National Treasury says it is satisfied with the outcomes of intergovernmental body the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) plenary meeting outcomes, despite South Africa not being likely to exit greylisting before June 2025.

During its meeting, held in Singapore on June 28, the FATF did not discuss the delisting of South Africa from greylisting at this juncture, but rather focused on the progress having been made by South Africa in addressing action items.

The action items are linked to eight strategic deficiencies having been identified in the country’s anti-money laundering and combatting of financing of terrorism regime.

The FATF plenary finds that South Africa has largely addressed eight action items, with 14 remaining outstanding. 

The items that have been addressed or largely addressed relate to the legal provisions criminalising terrorist financing and underpinning South Africa’s targeted financial sanction regimes.

Among the requirements is the increasing use of financial intelligence from the Financial Intelligence Centre to support money laundering investigations, the introduction of risk-based tools to identify higher-risk designated non-financial business and professions, the updating of the terror financing national risk assessment and increasing the resources and capacity of relevant authorities.

South Africa is required to have addressed 22 action items before it can exit the FATF’s greylist, which it entered onto in February 2023.

The action items have different deadlines falling between January this year and January 2025, with South Africa having two reporting cycles left in September this year and January 2025 in terms of the action plan.

South Africa is, therefore, required to have addressed or largely addressed nine outstanding action items by September 2024 and the final five by January 2025.

Once all the action Items have been addressed, the country is required to confirm its progress through an on-site visit by the FATF Joint Group.

If the FATF Plenary determines in February 2025 that South Africa has addressed or largely addressed all 22 action Items, it will schedule an on-site visit of the Joint Group in April or May 2025 to confirm that assessment and make a recommendation to the June 2025 FATF Plenary to remove the country from the FATF greylist.

If any of the action items remain unaddressed by the January 2025 deadline, the country will be required to continue reporting to the FATF every four months, until all the deficiencies have been addressed.

Treasury says that while South Africa is on track to address all of the outstanding action items, it remains a tough challenge to address all of the 14 outstanding action items by February 2025.

“All relevant agencies and authorities will need to continue demonstrating significant improvements and also that such improvements are being sustained effectively,” it states in a release issued on July 2.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has been leading a process within government to ensure that South Africa addresses all of the required action items by February 2025 to enable South Africa’s exit from greylisting by June 2025.