UNIPASS system to improve in 6 months – GRA

The Chairman of the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS) Technical Implementation Committee, Assistant Commissioner of Customs, Emmanuel Ohene, has assured freight forwarders that the UNIPASS clearing system at the country’s ports will improve within six months.

This follows criticisms by the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), which says the new system has failed.

Speaking at a press conference in Tema, Mr. Emmanuel Ohene, acknowledged that although the new system has some technical challenges, they are working to resolve them.

“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 the 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 an assurance that within forty-eight house this is what is been done,” he said.

Since the full implementation of the Ghana Revenue Authority’s new Integrated Customs Management Systems on June 1, 2020, the new system has been fraught with a lot of challenges, leaving importers and freight forwarders dissatisfied.

There has been increased agitation from freight forwarders and other stakeholders at the Ports, as they complained of possible increase in demurrage, the re-emergence of manual processes of release and the computation of figures in ICUMS among others.

Despite these problems, there have been assurances from authorities to resolve the challenges.

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

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.

Also, various stakeholders within the logistics supply chain have appealed to government to fix the system to prevent losses.