On July 22, 2025, the Bank of Ghana issued a formal notice (No. BG/GOV/SEC/2025/47) titled "Guidelines for the application of Exchange Rates by the Shipping Industry in Ghana”.
This notice was ostensibly issued in response to agitation by the shipping community notably Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), that shipping lines were exercising arbitrariness in setting the exchange rates at which they were converting their fees and charges into local currency, the Ghana cedi.
The agitation came to a head after the Ghana cedi (GH¢) had in April 2025, recorded a marked appreciation against the major trading currencies including the United States dollar (USD).
The freight forwarders were not alone in this complaint. They were joined by the Ghana Shippers Authority (GSA) who accused some shipping lines of arbitrary application of foreign exchange rates and hauled them, as part of GSA’s broader enforcement efforts under the new Ghana Shippers’ Authority Act, 2024 (Act 1122), before the Bank of Ghana (BOG), the statutory body responsible for managing the country’s foreign exchange regime.
The symptoms
Freight forwarders alleged that some shipping lines were using old exchange rates instead of the lower rates that were prevailing at the time the cargo was being cleared. As an illustration, some shipping lines were using exchange rates of about GHC15.00 to a dollar at a time when the prevailing rate was around GHC10.00 to a dollar, meaning that the shippers would not benefit from the GHC5.00 savings per dollar that the cedi’s appreciation had created. The shipping lines in question were arguing that the exchange rate applicable to all cargo on a particular vessel rotation had been set some 7 days prior to the vessel’s arrival in Tema port, and that the previously set rate would apply to all cargoes from that rotation, irrespective of the current improved exchange rate position.
GSA is reported to have conducted extensive investigations which confirmed that shipping lines were “unilaterally applying foreign exchange rates that deviate from official benchmarks in transactions with clients”.
In an interview on local radio station Joy FM, the CEO of GSA, Prof Ransford Gyampo is reported to have argued that “any deviation from the BoG rate by commercial entities for official transactions could lead to distorted pricing, unfair competition, and a lack of transparency for shippers” and that “while shipping lines may argue for the use of interbank rates or rates locked in at the port of origin, the GSA insists that these practices must align with Ghana's regulatory framework to protect local businesses.”
The prescription
Following BOG’s engagement with the GSA and the shipping lines, it issued the guidelines. In summary, the guidelines directed the players in the shipping industry to publish their rates daily on their website or physical business locations, to clearly indicate the exchange rate on their invoices and to ensure that their rates are reflective of the exchange rates of commercial banks. The guidelines also warned the shipping community that failure to adhere to Ghana’s law on foreign currency Foreign Exchange Act 2006 may attract sanctions.
The effect
If these guidelines were meant to be a solution to a set of problems as identified earlier in this piece, then it falls short.
For starters, the agitations primarily revolved around the much-disputed local charges or destination charges such as container administrative fees, container cleaning fees, container evacuation fees, etc. These are without doubt landside services rendered domestically by ship agents located in Ghana to consumers located in Ghana; services which ought to be viewed by the BOG as domestic in nature and which should therefore not be allowed to be priced in foreign currency in the first place.
Just as the BOG would not countenance a hairdressing salon located in Tema quoting its services in USD, it ought not to permit landside services rendered in Ghana to be priced in USD. It therefore beggars belief that the BOG would sidestep its own Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2019/07 prohibiting the pricing, advertising and receipt of foreign currency for goods and services in Ghana and give blanket approval to an undefined ‘shipping industry’ to price and advertise in USD in contravention of its law. The writer posits that the BOG and GSA, by allowing omnibus pricing of services in foreign currency by the shipping industry, are themselves permitting the breach of the Foreign Exchange Act 2006.
Secondly, assuming that the shipping agents were in fact in compliance with the Foreign Exchange Act 2006 in pricing and advertising their fees and charges in foreign currency, the notice does not address the argument that the shipping lines were arbitrarily setting their exchange rate.
The directive that the exchange rates set by the shipping lines must be reflective of commercial bank rates, and which must be benchmarked to the BOG’s interbank rate is at best moral suasion, or at worst, without effect.
Because the directive did not contain a mutually agreed reference rate for the shipping industry, the wide variations in shipping lines’ exchange rates could in theory persist despite this directive. Interestingly, the Vice President of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), Nana Asiamah Peprah I, is on record as saying that following the issuance of the guidelines, “Some of these shipping lines who were quoting very high rates are now being compelled to work with the Bank of Ghana rates”.
Clearly this statement is not borne out by the facts as contained in the guidelines and suggests that misalignment remains amongst the key stakeholders on what effect the guideline has.
There was also the matter of which day’s exchange rate would be applicable? Would it be the date of loading the cargo at load port, 7 days to arrival of vessel or date of the invoice? Here too, the directive fails to prescribe a solution. In effect, should there be another steep rise or fall in exchange rates like we saw in April 2025, this dispute could erupt all over again.
On the content of the notice itself, it reads more like a consumer protection statement than any foreign exchange control directive, prompting the question as to why this notice could not have easily been issued by the GSA itself in line with its powers as a consumer protection watchdog for the shipping community. This also brings to the fore the need for Ghana to develop competition laws that protect all consumers from unfair contract terms or unfair commercial practices.
Finally, the perennial agitation between shippers and shipping lines is all about money. And a lot of money at that. Take administrative fees for example, at an average of USD150 per twenty-foot container (TEU) and given that Ghana imports an average 1 million TEU per annum, this translates to a whopping USD150 million per annum. This doesn’t include the tens of millions of dollars in other charges and fees. For context, UN Trade and Development reports that Ghana is a net importer of maritime transport services to the tune of USD1.9 billion per annum.
In a country looking to develop its domestic maritime sector, policy makers should follow the money, checking how much of the value created in this industry can be retained in-country and then design policy aimed at tackling that specifically.
Afterall, if the USD150 million in administrative charges remained in-country and generated income tax revenue for the state and wealth creation for Ghanaian beneficially owned businesses, the agitation would be much muted.
The panacea
In conclusion, regulators of Ghana’s shipping industry must properly diagnose the problems to prescribe solutions that solve these problems. This requires in-depth understanding of the age-old industry’s international laws, conventions and best practices, which guide what is possible and what is not.
Lastly, and most importantly, the goal of regulation should be to implement policy to achieve a strategic direction. Regulating the maritime sector in Ghana should therefore be carried out within the context of a clear maritime strategy.
Answers to the questions of what the desired outcome is, and how can this be achieved, should guide the drafting of laws, legislative instruments and directives. Without this critical connection between regulation and outcome, regulators will be superintending over a maritime sector that is akin to a ship that is directionless and adrift.
The writer Maria Ogbugo, a senior maritime consultant with Ahorlu Marine Limited, a boutique maritime advisory firm based in Accra, Ghana. She can be reached at nogbugo@yahoo.com
