The new Commissioner-General of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Kofi Nti is optimistic that having a paperless system under the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) project will help enhance trade facilitation in the country.
He made this known after touring the Customs Technical Bureau office located at the Ministries in Accra today.
Mr Nti added : “The good thing about this project is that once there is data nobody can hide and do anything bad. With the biometric system customs can longer play truancy”.
“Going forward as revenue authority, we want to treat tax payers as customers. We want to treat them with decency, we want to have a very good relationship with them. And through that those who need propping up we will do”.
To this end, he said ” we believe we should be having a system where the tax payers are able to interact with us and we provide them with response”.
Our people are very efficient people. We can move from being better to best. That is where we want to move, Mr Nti stated.
He said “we want to improve the system that we have in place. We want to make it better than what we have now, that is our vision going forward”.
On undervaluation and non-compliance of payment of duties, Mr Nti said the GRA would look at the current sanction regime and makes it stronger so that at the end of the day “it isn’t us who are being accused of but then the people come and attract our people and get them to fault they will also bear the consequences”.
So, it will be a two-pronged approach that we will be adopting to get things done better, Mr Nti said.
Successes chalked
In a presentation on behalf of West Blue Consulting, the technical partners of the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) project, a Senior Revenue Officer, Customs Division of GRA, Albert Akurugu said despite the company’s short span on the project it successful implemented the Pre-Arrival Assessment Reporting System (PAARS) and other key components of the project.
The PAARS is a modernized system that has been developed by the Customs Division of GRA as part of the implementation of the GNSW project to enhance revenue mobilization, improve border security and customs clearance, overcome duplication across regulatory agencies and promote trade facilitation.
He revealed that the project which aims among others things at reducing delays at the ports and maximisation of revenue for the government had achieved 80 percent success rate.
Mr Akurugu noted that GRA could not meet its revenue target in the first year of the GNSW project implementation last year but it had improved revenue generation.
He added that the project had led to “28.7 percent improvement in GRA-Customs import duties and levies in 2016”.
Since the introduction of the GNSW’s PAARS last year, traders are able to access Customs Classification and Valuation Report (CCVR) within 48 hours.
In some cases, within an hour that is substantial improvement from the previous situation whereby it used to take traders more than a week or two weeks just to get their CCVR, Mr Akurugu stated.
Touching on enhancement of the system, Adedapo Adegoke, Deputy Head of Project Delivery Unit at West Blue Consulting was quick to add that the system had integrated Used Vehicle Valuation with Ghana Customs Management Systems (GCMS), a Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) platform last month.
Pre-population of CCVR data in GCMS; validation of key data elements of CCVR and Declaration; bill of Lading/Airway Bill; Gross and Net Weight (Net under review in view of appeals); PAARS auto rejection of undervalued transactions with system adjustment; channeling of New Vehicles to Vehicle Valuation Desk, among other were undertaken.
Interacting with the members of the Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism recently, the Chief Executive Officer of West Blue Consulting, Madam Valentina Mintah said another significant achievement of the GNSW project mentioned was the country’s historic performance on the recent World Bank’s Ease of Doing rankings.
Ghana had moved an impressive 13 places up on the Trading Across Borders in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report. The report accredited the performance to the GNSW project initiated by the government.
The Doing Business 2017 report, titled ‘’Equal Opportunity for All’, showed that Ghana was placed at position 108 out of 190 countries surveyed in the Overall Ranking of Ease of Doing Business – an improvement from 111 in the previous report.
In the sub-Saharan Africa sub-region, Ghana ranked in the Top 10, coming 9th, out of the 47 countries ranked in the region. This is evidence that the Government of Ghana is pursuing active reforms to ensure the Ease of Doing Business in Ghana.
New e-zone
Meanwhile, the new Commissioner-General of GRA, as part of his working tour of the office also commissioned an e-zone centre or help desk there. This is the third e-zone to be commissioned after Kotoka International Airport, and Tema Port e-zones.
While plans are at foot to open more e-zones across the country to provide excellent and immediate services to exporters and importers.
The e-zone facilities which were set up as part of the GNSW project will provide 24/7 customer services to exporters and importers in the country.
The facilities also provides services including payments, self-service, and multimedia trade information to speed up business transactions.
With the establishment of the facilities, the more than decade-old challenges of transacting businesses at the ports are over.
The Customs Division of GRA took over the processing of the CCRV from the destination companies in September 2015. The CCRV replaced the destination inspection report also known as the Final Classification and Valuation Report (FCVR).
Background
Instructively, the GNSW project was initiated on 1st September 2015 by the Government of Ghana to enhance the country’s trade and economic development and secure and increase government revenue. It was officially launched in 1st December, 2015.
Indeed, the Single Window concept was developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in 2005 as an effort to simplify, harmonise and standardise international trade procedures and associated information flows between trade and government and within government itself.
UNECE, through its UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), defined Single Window as “a facility that allows parties involved in trade and transport to lodge standardised information and documents with a single entry point to fulfill all import, export, and transit-related regulatory requirements. If information is electronic, then individual data elements should only be submitted once”.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
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