{"id":1246623,"date":"2022-11-08T14:12:17","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/08\/guta-blames-high-cost-of-goods-on-re-introduction-of-benchmark-values\/"},"modified":"2022-11-08T14:12:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:12:17","slug":"guta-blames-high-cost-of-goods-on-re-introduction-of-benchmark-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/11\/08\/guta-blames-high-cost-of-goods-on-re-introduction-of-benchmark-values\/","title":{"rendered":"GUTA blames high cost of goods on re-introduction of benchmark values"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Dr. Joseph Obeng<\/p>\n

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The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) is blaming the high cost of goods in the country on the re-introduction of the benchmark values.<\/p>\n

According to its President, Dr. Joseph Obeng, the 50% reduction of the benchmark values of imports is illegal.<\/p>\n

He is therefore calling for the reversal of the policy because it does not conform to the World Trade Protocols.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a Pre-Budget Forum powered by Joy Business, Dr. Obeng pointed out that the bench mark value was responsible for the rising cost of goods in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cBenchmark system doesn\u2019t exist anywhere; it does not exist in the WTO valuation system, is ilegal\u201d, he stressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they [Customs] have to use is the transactional values but are now using their own discretions to bring out a set of values to benchmark our prices. Everyone is blaming us the trading community for high price of goods and services, but that is not true\u201d, he stated.<\/p>\n

The Benchmark Value Discount Policy was introduced in April 2019 by government in an attempt to make the Ghanaian ports competitive, reduce smuggling and increase government\u2019s revenue from the port.<\/p>\n

The policy provided a discount of 50% on the delivery or benchmark values of imports with the exceptions of vehicles<\/p>\n

DISCLAIMER: <\/strong>The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Joseph Obeng The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) is blaming the high cost of goods in the country on the re-introduction of the benchmark values. According to its President, Dr. Joseph Obeng, the 50% reduction of the benchmark values of imports is illegal. He is therefore calling for the reversal of the policy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1246625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[202,2097,442,4969,168,2158,21532,296],"class_list":["post-1246623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-benchmark","tag-blames","tag-cost","tag-goods","tag-guta","tag-high","tag-reintroduction","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}