GRA builds capacity of staff for improved revenue mobilisation

The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has intensified training and capacity building of staff to enable them to work towards exceeding their revenue collection target for the year.

The division has also deployed strategies to block loopholes in its revenue collection exercise to meet the GH¢16.9-billion target for the year.

“We are improving the capacity and efficiency of staff through periodic training, knowledge sharing, teamwork and motivation to help build a strong institution that can support the government in its development agenda.

“We are introducing measures to address identified areas that negatively impact our revenue mobilisation drive by blocking leakages in the collection process,” the Commissioner of the division, Col Kwadwo Damoah (retd), said in an interview with the Daily Graphic during a retreat at Abokobi in the Greater Accra Region last Thursday as part of the effort to step up revenue collection in the country.

Retreat

The three-day retreat is an annual event for top officers and sector commanders of the division across the country.

It is also meant to review their performance for the previous year as they develop strategies to meet the target for the year.

They also deliberated on how to block loopholes that affected the country’s revenue mobilisation drive.

Improving collections

To improve revenue collection, Col Damoah said, his outfit needed to build the capacity of staff, especially on proper classification.

“In Customs, the two major functions that impact on revenue collection are classification and valuation. We need to understand the nature of the items that have been imported.

“And so it is important for officers to be well informed and equipped on how to classify commodities because once the classification is correct, valuation will also be correct,” he added.

The commissioner said the division had been able to empower all sector commanders to deal with issues at their own level.

“These and other measures, such as staff motivation through career promotion and retooling, instituted by my administration have brought some form of efficiency into the operations of the division,” he added.

According to him, the various strategies and measures which were being implemented were aimed at complementing customs installations and systems already deployed to improve revenue mobilisation.

As a result, the division was able to exceed its revised target for 2020 by GH¢1.7 billion, amid the outbreak of the virus, Col Damoah said.

The revenue target for the division per the 2020 budget was originally GH¢13.5 billion, but it was revised to GH¢10.9 billion due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We would have been able to achieve our target of GH¢13.5 billion had it not been for the reduction in trading activities across the world as a result of the pandemic which contracted imports,” he said.