Clearing agents and importers at the Tema Port say the government’s reluctance to reduce import charges is making business at the port unfriendly for them and their clients.
Additionally, they accused the shipping lines and shipping agencies of worsening their woes by charging the cedi-dollar exchange rate higher than what Customs has pegged at the port.
The outcome of the costly business environment at the port, they explained, was the daily high cost of goods on the markets.
“As we continue to pay more to clear goods at the port, we have no option but to transfer the additional cost to you, the final consumer, so that we can break even and make some profit. The business environment at the port now, plus the arrival of ICUMS/UNIPASS, I must tell you, is sour for us,” Mawuli Tettey Ahiafor, spokesperson for the group, told the media at a brief presser at Community ‘2’, Tema, on Wednesday.
Mr Ahiafor wondered why in the midst of the painful business environment at the Tema Port, and the “cruel” introduction of revenue generation policies by the government, civil society organisations and pressure groups that spoke for importers and clearing agents in the past have gone silent now.
“The government says it has reduced import duties, but we can tell you that it’s not true. Importers are paying some duties on even personal effects. There are astronomical charge increases in a lot of goods. For example, a box of apples, which was cleared at GH¢45 in the past, is now being cleared at GH¢120.
“Furthermore, port security charges have been increased from US$106 to US$245. These increments were made without notification to the importers and clearing agents.
“In fact, doing business at the port today is more expensive than it used to be. We need the civil society organisations, pressure groups and media that were our mouthpiece four years ago to help us get the government to hear our cry by removing all the bottlenecks that are hindering the friendly business environment at the ports,” he added.
Another frustrating process he mentioned, was the delay in issuing invoices online.
Though the port management has continued to hold that it takes less than 24 hours for an importer or clearing agent to receive their invoices online, Mr Ahiafor said: “It is never true. Sometimes, it takes more than 24 hours for one to receive their invoices, and when they delay in clearing your cargo, for example, they (port management) charge you for demurrage. Their own process and their ICUM/UNIPASS will delay you so they can get you to pay more charges. These deliberate actions are killing us very fast, and the earlier the government comes hears us and does something to alleviate our business woes, the better for the customer who continues to complain of high cost of imported goods on the market.”
Other aggrieved importers and clearing agents, including freight forwarders, complained of the hustles and frustrations the single window ICUMS/UNIPASS had visited on their businesses at the port.
What is UNIPASS?
CUPIA UNIPASS operates in Ghana as a single window port management system, rolled out by the government to take over the duplicitous services being provided by CTN-Ghana, West Blue and the Ghana Community Network (GC-Net).
The government introduced the platform this year to institute a sole service provider for trade facilitation at the ports.
The new port system, the government explained, would break away from the past when the government had, for a long time, been bogged down with cantankerous trade documentations at the country’s exit points.
Gone were the days when the ports had Automated Systems for Customs Data Collection (ASYCUDA), which came with a lot of paper work and export documentations.
Tracing the antecedence of Ghana’s port management system, Customs first moved to the first generation of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) introduced by GC-Net. This development helped relieve port managers from the conundrum of rationalising documentation.
The second generation of the EDI system, which is currently running, is a web-based platform which has come a long way to help trade facilitation.
Governments, over the years, had tried to introduce new technologies; that is, IT, into the country’s clearance system. So, came three vendors, providing almost the same services to the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), namely GC-Net, West Blue and CTN.
In view of the duplications in the provision of the same services, the government said it needed to introduce UNIPASS, a masterstroke that eliminates all sorts of old fashioned paperwork at the port.
UNIPASS is, thus, a single vendor to unify all activities and services that are provided by all these three vendors onto one single system, and it has Ghana Link Network Services as its local partner. The contract for the paperless port service was awarded in March 2018 for US$40. It is a 10-year window contract.
It is expected to make the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) more comprehensive.
In addition, the UNIPASS system would include a clearance management system, a cargo management system, an information management system, and an administration system.
The UNIPASS is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window. This, implementers say, would be a departure from the previous system, in which valuation and classification, risk management, payment, documents verification, cargo clearance were handled by different entities.
The post Business environment at Tema Port unfriendly; Clearing agents, importers appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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