Congestion at the ports hindering work of Customs
The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) says its officials at the country’s ports are unable to conduct exhaustive physical examination of goods arriving at the ports due to congestion.
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According to the Commissioner of the division, Mr John Vianney Kuudamnuru, whereas the ban on the importation of certain products are still in place, congestion within the port space has made it difficult for officials to fully unload containers for a comprehensive physical examination to ensure those products are not allowed into the market space.
“Because there are no sufficient spaces to unload an entire container, our officers, in doing the physical examination, may only bring out a few items for viewing on the assumption that the items are legal products that ought to be allowed into the market space,” Mr Vianney said.
He indicated that importers of products such as frozen turkey tails, for instance, would conceal them in the container by covering them with large quantities of frozen chicken to deceive officials to believe that the entire consignment was frozen chicken.
Importers of used clothing, mattresses and pirated textiles, Mr Vianney said, had also adopted similar strategies by diverting them to neighbouring countries where the products were allowed, and then cart them, using the services of smaller boat operators, to coastal communities such as Ada in the Greater Accra Region and parts of the Volta Region, from where they unload them for onward transportation to the various market centres.
He made the disclosures during an interaction with members of the Media Network of the ECOWAS Community Development Programme (ECOWAS CDP) in Accra last Saturday.
Post-Market Surveillance
Mr Vianney said the Customs officials were also unable to carry out a post-market supervision to identify and withdraw such banned products from the markets because such activities did not necessarily fall within their domain.
“It is the responsibility of other stakeholder regulatory agencies to conduct post-market activities to ensure that banned products that escape the eye of Customs into the market space are withdrawn,” he stressed.
Boat Patrols
Mr Vianney said the Marine unit of the service was also unable to carry out patrols to apprehend boat operators who illegally transported consignments into the country from neighbouring countries because the only patrol speedboat belonging to the division had been out of service for some time now.
He said the division, therefore, depended on the Marine Police for such services.
Porous border controls, he said, had equally compounded their challenges thus giving a leeway to smugglers to operate.
In view of the challenges, he said the division needed to get a lot of informants at various points, since the smugglers had become sophisticated and often creative in their approach to outwit officials.
External Tariffs
On the ECOWAS Common External Tarrifs (CET), the implementation of which had been greeted with agitations from the trading public, with calls for its withdrawal, Mr Vianney explained that Customs was only an implementation agency.
“We are only implementing and if there should be a withdrawal, it must come from Parliament which enacted the implementation act,” he explained.
A member of the Technical Committee on the CET, Deputy Commissioner of Customs, Dr Godfred Okoh-Appiah, for his part, pointed out that the coming into effect of the CET was to promote trade, set up production or manufacturing plants within ECOWAS countries to produce, promote trade and create employment across the subregion.
“The CET’s implementation would see a reduction in cost of production overtime,” Dr Okoh Appiah said.
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