Govt will not tolerate inexplicable charges, delays at ports — Veep

The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has reiterated that from the beginning of September, 2017, the government will not tolerate the inexplicable charges, delays and lack of transparency at the various ports in the country.

He said there would be a shift from a system of applying sub-standard and unnecessary procedures at the ports to a system which met international standards in conformity with trade facilitation agreements.

“Our aim is to change the phase of operations at the ports so that we can meet international standards and improve our trade competitiveness, while making the most of our ports as national assets,” he stated.

Delivering his address at the closing ceremony of the national policy summit on trade and industry in Accra yesterday, Dr Bawumia stated that “beginning September 1 this year we are moving away from a paper-based system largely at the Tema Port to a largely paperless system that will see importers being able to clear containers less than four hours.”

The two-day summit brought together industry players both in the public and private sectors to share smart and innovative ideas on how best the government could create more sustainable environment for businesses to thrive and create jobs to support the government’s development agenda.

Archaic port processes

Dr Bawumia said on May 17, this year, a conference organised by the government on how to improve ports operations and management efficiency in Ghana brought together a number of stakeholders, including the best port operators in the world.

During the event, he said, it emerged that the country’s ports had lagged behind in all areas of port operations, with the ports becoming bottlenecks for Ghana’s trade competitiveness.

He, therefore, asked for the cooperation of various stakeholders in the implementation of three-key measures initiated by the government to achieve mandatory less intrusive joint inspection and paperless processing of all the relevant port documents.

He also indicated that effective September 1, 2017, the government would abolish all internal customs barriers on the country’s highways.

“In addition to these reforms, we will be implementing a risk engine and incorporate price data of all goods imported to the country so that importers cannot come and declare something worth $100 as $20,” he stated.

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Addressing unfair trade

To create a congenial business environment, Dr Bawumia said the government would soon inaugurate the Ghana Trade International Commission (GITC) to deal with unfair trade issues and the competitiveness of local private sector as well as contribute to make industrial transformation agenda a reality.

“The GITC will provide for the regulation of the international trade of Ghana in conformity with the rules and regulations of the World Trade Organisation and look into complaints brought forward by the private sector in matters such as subsidies of imported products by foreign government, dumping of imported products into the domestic market, tariff adjustment, settlement of disputes between importers and customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority and issues that affect fair trade,” he said.

Export surplus

Touching on the mid-year budget, the Vice-President said provisional estimate showed that Ghana’s trade account recorded a surplus of $1.4 billion for the first half of 2017 largely because of significant increase in export earnings combined with lower imports.

“This is an almost equivalent deficit of $1.4 billion for the same period in 2016. It is our hope that we will see greater improvement in our trade balance as we implement a strategy to stimulate industry and increase export competitiveness,” he said.

According to him, such achievement would depend on industry productivity and their capacity to incorporate technology in the way they produced goods and services in the country.

Borrowing responsibly

He gave an assurance that the government would reduce the fiscal deficit back from 9.4 per cent in 2016 to a projected 6.3 per cent this year, adding that “we are going to pass a law by amending the Public Financial Management Act to limit the fiscal deficit from 2017 to a window between three and five per cent of GDP”.

“We have never done this in Ghana and this demonstrates that the government is very committed to keeping fiscal discipline so that every investor, internal or external, and every player in our economy will know that from 2018, Ghana’s fiscal deficit will always be between the range of three and five per cent.” 

The Vice-President indicated that in a bid to bring the country’s debt back to more sustainable levels, the government was working to reduce the debt to GDP ratio, saying that: “It does not mean we are not going to borrow.

“It only means that we are going to borrow responsibly and not recklessly as no government can say they will not borrow money. That is ridiculous since that is the way we are going to manage the economy,” he added.