The Chamber of Freight and Trade says the recent challenges faced by freight forwarders at the country’s ports should inform government to assume full control of the clearing of goods at the ports.
GCNet was ordered by the Office of the Senior Minister to handover the single window platform to UNIPASS on April 28.
However, the new system took off to a false start, leading to agitations from freight forwarders who were unable to clear their goods for two days.
On Thursday April 30, GCNET was allowed to restore its operations in the meantime to serve freight forwarded and save the country from further revenue losses.
Speaking to Citi Business News, the President of the Chamber of Freight and Trade, Mr. Dennis Amfo-Sefah, said government’s total control of the declaration systems at the ports will deal with the monopoly enjoyed by GCNet.
“We want to encourage government that this was the more reason why we supported the idea of Government, GRA and Customs owning the system. If the system of cargo clearance was being managed and owned by Customs, it wouldn’t have this problem, but because this system is owned by a private company, it can decide to shut the system down and bring the whole clearance system and process to a standstill.”
“We hope and pray that GCNet will go by the directives of the Commissioner General that was issued on the 27th of April, because we have documents already logged in their system and documents that had already being issued by the pass system that can only go through the GCNET system because they have the manifests loaded onto their system already. They should open up the load so their system would be free from all those declarations and all those documents,” he said.
Though the challenges led to loss of revenue, GCNet, stated that it was able to process over 1,500 declarations just in an hour after the company was directed to restore operations.
The UNIPASS/ICUMS system
The UNIPASS/ICUMS platform is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window; a departure from the previous system where valuation and classification and risk management and payment were handled by different entities.
CUPIA Korea, which is assisting the Customs Division to implement the UNIPASS system, has described it as an enhanced single window system for trade facilitation.
The company which is expected to address key challenges at the ports also replaces the existing service providers, the Ghana Community Network Services (GCNet), which has operated for nearly 17 years, and West Blue Consulting.
Rejection of UNIPASS
Following the introduction of the system, there has been strong opposition from various stakeholders who insist on maintaining the existing single window in order not to severely disrupt trade and revenue flows.
Policy think-tank, IMANI Africa, earlier this month petitioned government to temporarily suspend the operations of UNI-PASS and allow GCNET and West Blue to operate for the remainder of the year to rake in revenue in excess of GHS10 billion for the country considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade activities.