The Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) has criticized the Ghana Revenue Authority, GRA, over what it describes as a failure of the newly introduced Integrated Customs Management System, ICUMS, also known as UNIPASS.
The system, according to GIFF, has for the past one week since its introduction, faced series of challenges that call for urgent attention.
Speaking at a press conference in Tema, the President of GIFF, Eddie Akrong, said the system is bedeviled with challenges that threaten business and revenue at the ports.
“ICUMS, as we speak, has not been fully integrated with other players in the chain. This includes terminals, shipping lines, ground handlers and some courier stations. This has led to the re-emergence of manual processes of release. There seems to be a huge problem with the computation of figures in ICUMS, and of particular interest is that of vehicle declaration. We also have noticed a trend of customs validated duty declaration documents with figures which defy reason. The status quo before the change should be reinstated pending any further form of readjustments. Government would have to carefully appraise this dire situation and advise itself on the choices to make going forward,” he said.
The Chairman of the ICUMS Technical Implementation Committee, Assistant Commissioner of Customs, Emmanuel Ohene, conceded that although the new system has some technical challenges, they are working at resolving them within six months.
“From our projections, we are anticipating that within the next six months, ICUMS end-to-end clearance will take forty-eight hours. It is important to mention that when I was explaining the issue of SLAs, I indicated that we have several levels of activity in post ICUMS where you have pre-arrival, clearance and post-clearance. In all of these spheres of deployment, we had instances where to date, clearance could not be conducted from end-to-end for these three different segments in forty-eight hours. Now, the intention is to ensure that we can address this challenge in a very wholistic manner and set for ourselves realizable goals and targets to enable us get into the beginning of the new year, with a certainty and assurance that within forty-eight hours this is can be done,” he said.
Background
The UNIPASS/ICUMS platform is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window. It is replacing the systems operated by West Blue Consulting and the Ghana Community Service Network Limited (GCNet).
The system took full effect fully on Monday, June 1, 2020.
But the first and subsequent days of the system’s roll-out has witnessed increased agitation from freight forwarders at the Tema and Takoradi Ports, despite assurances from authorities to resolve the challenges.
Some have even called for a suspension of the system.
Also, various stakeholders within the logistics supply chain have appealed to government to fix the system to prevent losses.
Rejection of UNIPASS
Prior to its take-off, stakeholders including the Minority in Parliament and the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders kicked against the roll-out of new system.
According to them, there is no need to do away with GCNet and Westblue at the ports, when they have demonstrated superior ability over the years.
Policy think-tank, IMANI Africa, earlier this year also petitioned government to temporarily suspend the operations of UNI-PASS and allow GCNET and West Blue to operate for the remainder of the year
According to them, this is to rake in revenue in excess of GHS10 billion for the country, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade activities.
