A Minority member of Parliament Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo claims Ghana lost GHC100million revenue at the Ports over a three-day period in April 2020 due to the mismanagement of the GCNet-UNIPASS transition.
According to him, the lose in revenue has continued till today resulting in huge losses to the country.
Addressing the media in Parliament, Hon. Adongo has therefore called on the government to allow GCNET to continue handling operations instead of handing it over to UNIPASS.
“From 28th of April to 30th of April Ghana did not receive a penny at the ports from clearance of goods. So we lost close to GHC100 in three to four days just to pave way for the transition of West Blue, GCNet to UNIPASS. And that all the protocol for transition and pilot would have cleared the way for us to have a seamless transition from an end-to-end digital system to an end-to-end digital system. What this letter tells us is that we’ve moved from a digital system to a manual system.”
Managers of Ghana’s port have reverted to the manual clearing of goods following the challenges associated with the deployment of the Unipass system to replace existing GCNET and West Blue systems.
UNIPASS is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window. It is a departure from the previous system in which ‘valuation and classification’ and ‘risk management and payment’ were handled by different entities.
The single window system is aimed at coordinating all activities at the ports on one platform to reduce time and cost in clearing and exporting goods.
The system, spearheaded by Ghana Link Services Ltd, in collaboration with Customs UNIPASS International Agency (CUPIA) of the Korean Customs Service, the designer of the system, replaces the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAARS) and the Ghana Customs Management System (GCMS) jointly operated by the Customs Division, the Ghana Community Network Services (GCNet) Ltd and West Blue Consulting.
Source: Kasapafmonline.com/102.5FM
