Operators of the Single Window Project, West Blue Consulting have announced a 28.7 percent increase in revenue collection for the country in 2016 at the Tema Port, despite missing its set target.
The Single Window System was introduced by government to provide an integrated clearance process aimed at reducing long hours faced by importers and exporters at the port.
Speaking to Citi Business News after a visit by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, the Managing Director of West Blue Consulting Valentina Mintah stated that the company was able to block many revenue leakages in the period under review.
“If you look at revenue, the Ghana Revenue Authority [Customs] collected 28.7 percent improvement compared to the previous year’s collection. That is quite significant but I must mention they did miss their target but if you look at the revenue collection improvement, that was significant,” she maintained.
Pointing out some key agencies that aided in the revenue improvement, Madam Mintah stated that targets were defined to block revenue leakages in the system to achieve some goals.
“If you look at the mandate of customs, which is our key client in association with the Ministry of Finance, Ministry Trade, and the other regulatory agencies. The Customs has three mandates, revenue collection, border security and trade facilitation. We set a number of KPIs for this programme to be able to look at our performance and evaluate it. One of those was to look at the improvement and time and cost of doing business in Ghana, and we benchmarked it with the World Bank Ease of Doing business Rankings,” she said.
She stated that significant improvement was realized while challenges have been assessed to help improve on the performance of the year under review.
“Today we had a look at where we were when we first started, the key performance indicators we set and the outcomes have being good and we are very pleased to present a positive outlook where significant improvement in the trading across borders index of the World Bank Ease of Doing Business, and also in the logistic performance index where Ghana did particularly well in the Customs component,” she stressed.
Meanwhile the Chairman of the Committee on Trade, Industry, and Tourism, Titus Glover assured that the company will be given the needed support by the legislature to improve revenue mobilization.
He applauded the achievements of West Blue in meeting the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index.
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By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
