MEMBERS of Ghana Union of Traders’ Association (GUTA) have urged the Mahama-led government, as a matter of urgency, to indefinitely suspend the implementation of the Ghana Conformity Assessment programme (G-CAP) by the Ghana Standard Authority (GSA).
This follows revelation that the GSA’s new baby has not been approved by the Parliament but authorities at GSA were working secretly to introduce the new tax without the consent of Members of Parliament (MPs).
But according to laws of Ghana, it is Parliament which is mandated to introduce taxes in the country, they stated.
Stating their position on the proposed implementation of the programme, which was scheduled to take off today, the President of GUTA, George Ofori, warned that when the G-CAP was implemented, it would thwart the recovery process of the Ghanaian economy.
He told journalists at press conference in Accra that the implementation of the programme would also trigger the increase of commodity prices in the country.
Though GSA says importers will bear the cost of the G-CAP services, Mr. Ofori and his members absolutely disagreed with that assertion, insisting: “There is no free lunch anywhere. The importers will also pass the G-CAP services cost to the consumers”.
He explained that the G-CAP, which was scheduled to take effect from 1st October, 2014, was suspended by the Ministry of Trade and Industry to allow further consultations.
Mr. Ofori stressed: “We laud the idea, but have much concern with the approach and/or the hasty manner the GSA is pushing for the implementation”.
After the launch of the programme, which was immediately followed with an aggressive publicity, he told the journalists that GUTA thoroughly studied and analysed the programme, including its cost benefit analysis and had some serious concerns about the manner of implementation, which they petitioned and Minister of Trade and Industry on the 9th of September, 2014, and copied Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, GSA, Ghana Revenue Authority, among others.
In the Petition, members of GUTA stated that following as reasons for their rejection of the manner in which the implementation was going to be carried out.
There has not been broader consultation with relevant stakeholders as the public was made to believe; and there has also not been adequate education for better understanding of the programme, especially, to clarify certain pertinent issues regarding the new policy , such as the following below.
Open market purchasers
The GUTA President stated: “Most of the importers are informal operators. They form the majority in the import business sector, and are small to medium scale importers. About 70% of them purchase their goods from the open market of the country of import – e.g. China, Dubai, India, Turkey, etc, and consolidate the goods into mixed containers and ship them into the country”.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Ofori says that it will be impossible to capture this group of importers into such a programme, since they do not buy goods direct from the manufacturers and, therefore, will be difficult for them to acquire certificate of conformance and/or analysis from the manufacturer, hence the importance of destination inspection.
In the wake of the already harsh economic condition in the country, where exchange rate is very high, import duty is also astronomically high, with its attendant inflation, coupled with low purchasing power and so on; when they all acknowledged the fact that the government is doing everything possible to ameliorate the situation, they find it difficult to understand why GSA thinks that it is conducive for it to introduce or implement such an ambiguous policy that can only trigger agitation from the already suffocated business community, especially those in the import and export sectors of the economy .
In view to this, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism invited members of GUTA (petitioners) and all other relevant stakeholders for hearing on Tuesday, 16September, 2014, which they attended in their numbers including their collaborators like the Ghana Food and Beverage Importers Association, Ghana, among others, who also petitioned parliament.
After listening to them and GSA, parliament realized that the petitioners had a valid case, so it asked GSA to suspend the programme, sit with all the stakeholders and build consensus before anything could be done about the issue.
Surprisingly, the GSA defied this wise counseling from the national Parliament and went ahead with the announcement the following day, as if they have no regard for both the parliament and the stakeholders they met with, Mr. Ofori lamented.
In another follow up meeting with them at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the acting Minster, Dr. Mustapha Ahmed, after hearing from all sides, also called the suspension of the programme to allow for adequate consultations with all stakeholders and report to him in November.
As a result, GSA was asked to suspend any announcement to all the matter as well as to inform the manufactures that the programme had been suspended.
In their defiance posture and demeanor , their agent SGS circulated information to the manufacturers that the programme had been suspended for only a month, and will be reintroduced on the 1st of November, 2014.
By this posture of GSA and its agents, members of GUTA were only made to believe that they were bent on imposing this unacceptable and obnoxious policy, which lacks transparency on the business community in the country.
Mr. Ofori and his group maintained that; “as members of the business community, hereby, resolve and emphatically state herein that we shall not accept such an imposition.
To this end, we are calling on all our members and other collaborators to ignore any future announcement, directive or circular that may come from the GSA in this regard; until consensus is built among all the parties involved in this matter and properly communicated in a joint communiqué “.
Duplication of functions
There is also the need for a clear definition of function of the New Pre-shipment Inspection Agencies as against the already existing Destination Inspection Companies (DICs) in the country, to avoid duplication of functions, increase cost of doing business as well as unnecessarily prolonging import transaction in the country.
As a nation, if we want to revert to the pre-shipment era, then, we should opt out of the current Destination Inspection regime, to save the business community, especially traders from unnecessary bureaucratic processes and procedures, as well as increase cost of doing business, Mr. Ofori stated.
They observed: “If the purpose of the programme is to ensure quality and conformity to standards of products from importing or exporting companies, and once the Ghana Standard Authority will still continue with its monitoring and testing to ensure quality and standard, all that we need to do, as a nation, is to demand certificate of conformance with an internationally accredited standard agency from the manufacturing companies themselves, which could be verify by the Ghana Standard Authority ; in the case of any doubt .
Here, we would have achieved the same or better objective without necessarily appointing any third party agent, which will definitely impede business and compound the already high cost of doing business in the country.”
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