Paperless operation takes off with challenges

The official commencement of the paperless clearance system at the country’s ports was greeted with mixed reactions at the Tema Port on Monday following the withdrawal of Customs Compliance officials.

The transition, which was expected to be smooth was, however, met with agitations by the freight forwarders and agents whose declarations from the previous manual regime were pending at the documentation processing centre, popularly referred to as the Long Room at the Tema Port.

The backlog of over 200 declarations which were to be checked by the compliance officers were thus left unattended to, causing agitation among the agents and importers, who argued that the backlogs ought to be worked on before the withdrawal of the officers from the frontline.

Similarly, reports suggest that the import declaration form (IDF) that was used to process the Pre Arrival Assessment Report (PAARS) was also not going through thereby giving challenges to those filing their declarations electronically.

GIFF

The President of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF), Mr Kwabena Ofosu Appiah, told the Daily Graphic in Tema that although they were not anticipating the take-off to be 100 per cent smooth, they expected the Customs Division to have put in place contingency measures to address the fallout.

“Even though the roll-out has been planned, the Customs Division could have anticipated initial hitches and put in place a contingency measure instead of the reactionary approach that was exhibited today,” Mr Ofosu-Appiah said.

The transition, he said, had not been managed properly, and “we will expect the Customs Division to beef up its human resource to address the situation,” he added.

Commenting on the electronic declaration, Mr Ofosu-Appiah suggested that if the project would suffer any setbacks, it would be as a result of system failure, and urged the service providers to endeavour to live up to the task and ensure a successful implementation of the project.

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Customs

The Tema Sector Commander of the Customs Division, Mr Felix Mate-Kojo, also told the Daily Graphic that 26 compliance officers who could have worked on the residual declarations that had been pending were recalled to the Customs head office leaving just a skeletal staff.

“The agitations today by the freight forwarders clearly show that the numbers were inadequate and we have subsequently requested for the number to be increased to 10,” he said.

He added that the situation fortunately had normalised following a meeting with the freight forwarders and their executives.

The engagement, he said, also afforded customs officials the opportunity to further deepen the understanding of the freight forwarders as questions from the interactions revealed majority of them did not understand the processes.

“Most of the challenges were born out of a lack of understanding of the processes, and considering that change comes with difficulties, we will continue to engage them as the processes flow,” Mr Mate-Kojo suggested.

Electronic declarations

Asked about the electronic declarations that had been received into the Customs Management System to test the functionality of the system, Mr Mate-Kojo said the first day recorded five declarations, while September 2, 3 and 4 recorded 16, 8 and 288 declarations respectively.

He expressed the hope that the numbers would pick up steadily as the days progressed.

The General Manager in charge of Marketing and Corporate Affairs at the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA), Mrs Esther Gyebi-Donkor, also said the authority received 123 electronic requests for payment of ground rent and handling charges, of which invoices on 80 requests were raised.

She, however, said clients had a challenge with the payment at the bank following Ecobank’s inability to reconcile the Authority’s receiving accounts.

“We have, however, put in place contingency measures by allowing the old manual payment system to run alongside the electronic processes, and we will operate it alongside the electronic until it is phased out,” Mrs Gyebi-Donkor said.

She also assured the public that the GPHA would liaise with Ecobank to address the challenges with the receiving account, as well as the online payment platform that is linked to the account.

Background

The paperless reform which is part of a three-pronged policy announced in May 2017, is part of initiatives aimed at eliminating bureaucratic processes and extortion as a result of face-to-face interaction between traders and port officials in the trade supply chain.

Writer’s email: della.russel@graphic.com.gh