Business News of Thursday, 1 November 2018
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2018-11-01
President of Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), Kwabena Ofosu Appiah
The President of Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), Kwabena Ofosu Appiah has admonished the Ghana Revenue Authority to stop the implementation of the Cargo Tracking Note (CTN) and rather use a more efficient approach that would ensure the smooth run of operations at the various ports.
GIFF has in the past few months taken a tough stance against the CTN policy including staging a strike on August 27 to back their demand for the policy to be withdrawn at the ports.
The action was necessitated by what the businesses described as government’s failure to heed concerns on the policy which impedes trade facilitation.
Speaking at an IMANI Stakeholder meeting on trade facilitation and revenue mobilisation, Mr. Ofosu Appiah said with the custom to custom approach, Ghana Customs Service can directly interface with custom entities in other countries for easy trade facilitation.
“If we have a problem today, we’re clear in minds where we think the solutions are. So we pointed to customs to customs cooperation. If you want to validate the soft document, you will have to validate it against the source. In the trade facilitation conversation, when you go into the world trade organisation space when source is mentioned it references you to the customs entity of the supporting country. So when we say if today’s solution on the ground are not adequately addressing your concerns, why don’t you kick-start that which is permissible under the trade facilitation agreement. Why don’t you Ghana customs begin to interface with your other customs entities”, he said.
The forum on the theme “Finding the balance between trade facilitation and revenue mobilisation: Aligning the incentives of major stakeholders” sought to discuss and suggest practical solutions to emerging factors and challenges affecting port efficiency and revenue mobilisation in Ghana with focus on recent developments such as the CTN and developments in the Single Window project.
It also sought to align the incentives of major stakeholders in promoting relevance, coherence and smooth implementation of all port-related policies in Ghana.