By Charles Chedar, GNA, GNA
Wa, (UW), Oct. 24, GNA – The Ghana Export
Promotion Authority (GEPA) on Tuesday organised a sensitisation workshop for
freight forwarders and exporters in the Upper West Region on provision of
accurate information on non-traditional exports and prevention of data loss.
The GEPA collaborated with the Ghana Institute
of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) and Export Business Community to spearhead the
session to ensure participants receive requisite knowledge and skills for
adequate data protection of non-traditional products.
Similar programmes will be taking place in
other border regions of Ghana for stakeholders on the imperatives of protecting
and ensuring transmission of accurate information during export
declaration.
Non-traditional products such as Cocoa, Shea
nuts, Coffee, Cashew Nuts, Handicrafts, Bananas, Plantain and many more are
exported to various market destinations across the globe, but data provided by
local exporters had been found to be mostly inaccurate.
The GEPA told participants during the training
that it had the mandate to ensure non-traditional products exported to various
foreign markets possessed the right data and were safe for exchange.
Mr Maxwell Osei-Kusi, the Director of GEPA,
said the sensitisation programme became necessary because of emerging observations
about inaccurate export declaration forms and loss of data due to
non-presentation on some manually completed export forms.
“We have noticed that some of the data that we
receive which has been published to many stakeholders – World Bank, United Nations
and other partners – for decision making and analysis, and it is crucial for an
accurate and reliable export data to be provided,” Mr Osei-Kusi said.
He stated that GIFF should see themselves as
the heart of the country because any information given was being used to make a
vital decisions for national policy and development.
Ghana has set a target of achieving $5.3
billion from exportation of non-traditional goods by the end of 2021.
Mr Henry Ayinemi Atampubiri, the Upper West
Regional Commander of Customs, Excise and Preventive Service Division of the
Ghana Revenue Service Commander said Freight Forwarders played important roles
in the exportation process.
He said it was the duty of Customs to educate
GIFF to capture credible information of exporters which would reflect at the
national level.
“Most of our Freight Forwarders are not well
informed in the customs procedures and there is the need of updating their
skills through organised capacity building for them”, he said.
The objective of the programme was to create
awareness among GEPA stakeholders regarding to need to ensure accurate data
entry during export declaration to avert export data loss.
GNA