Nigerian Customs Service gives West Blue thumbs-up
The Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has given West Blue Consulting (WBC) a clean bill of health for the services the company rendered the organisation.
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According to the NCS, ever since the WBC was engaged in 2013 as a partner in capacity-building programmes for customs officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to take over from service providers, it had performed tremendously.
In a correspondence to the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) from the Controller-General of the NCS, Mr D. I. Abdullahi, a copy of which is available to the Daily Graphic, the NCS said West Blue was engaged as the technical partner in the deployment of the new trade portal, www.nigeriatradehub.gov.ng, to provide around-the-clock online and real time information about Nigerian international trade “and it performed up to satisfaction”.
The July 2, 2015 letter noted that West Blue spearheaded the development of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) “for pre-arrival processing of Nigerian imports”.
That, it said, happened at a time when the service providers were not forthcoming on the replacement system for customs clearance.
“Today, PAAR has been a success story in Nigeria by helping increase revenue by about 20 per cent, reducing clearance time and improving operator compliance significantly.
“Within the first six months, 178 operators were considered trusted to be admitted into new fast-track scheme,” it said.
Choked system
The letter said the reported ‘choke’ and congestion associated with the early days of PAAR had nothing to with the failure of the PAAR system or its operator but was rather due to the reluctance of a destination inspection (DI) company to live up to its contractual obligations.
It said the system had now fully stabilised, largely due to the pool of young officers who were trained to take over the DI programme, noting that “the credit largely goes to West Blue, whose approach to protect management favours sustainability”.
It said the NCS was willing to send a team of officers to Ghana to share more experiences on any other aspect of the project if required.
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Background
The WBC has, within the last few weeks, generated controversy in Ghana after the Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) alerted the government to a possible breach of its service contract if the government went ahead to sign a new single window (SW) agreement with West Blue.
The Chief of Staff’s letter had, in May 12, 2015, directed the Minister of Finance “to formally engage West Blue to render services such as software implementation and support activities to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and related agencies for take-over of the functions of the DICs on September 1, 2015, conduct needs/GAP analysis for the implementation of the national SW and implement the national SW blueprint, following the needs/GAP analysis”.
It asked the Minister of Finance to “take the necessary steps to secure the Public Procurement Board’s approval in order to engage West Blue on a single source basis”.
The SW concept provides an opportunity for traders to lodge their documents, including certificates of origin, invoices, customs declarations and import/export permits, at a single location (electronically) to be accessed by all regulatory and trade agencies, instead of traders sending copies of the same documents to different agencies.
The facility reduces the cost and time of doing business
But GCNet is of the view that if the government engages the services of West Blue, it (government) will breach the contract between them.
Government denies
The government responded to the concerns of GCNet, stating that it did not breach any contract with the network when it signed an agreement with West Blue Ghana Limited.
A statement signed by the Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine, said the government came to that conclusion based on the fact that the notice that GCNet served on the government specifically related to the SW and thus it was important to ascertain the scope and meaning of the provision contained in that expression.
It said the review of the documents was also to determine the extent to which the implementation of the national SW would constitute a breach of the agreement.
The statement said the concept of an SW was introduced for the first time in the supplemental agreement in relation to the TradeNet regime and that that agreement did not define the term ‘Single Window’.
“But is clear from a reading of the agreement that the term ‘Single Window’ is used in the context of the deployment of the TradeNet and its implementation is, therefore, inextricably tied to the TradeNet,” it said.
It added that the language of Article 4.2 of the supplemental agreement was revealing in that respect, which referred to the ‘Single Window’ concept that was being implemented as an integral part of the TradeNet and in 4.2.4 to the obligation of GCNet to arrange the purchase, financing and installation of the necessary hardware and application software to ensure that implementation of the SW concept was quickly deployed under the TradeNet.