Customs is building capacity of staff to maximise revenue collection — Commissioner

The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) continues to update the skills of officers to ensure they live up to their revenue mobilisation tasks.

Alhaji Seidu Iddrisu Iddisah, the Commissioner of Customs, said some recalcitrant traders occasionally attempted to pass on fake invoices in processing their import declarations, hence the Division continued to build staff capacity to enable them to detect those anomalies and enforce trade regulations and compliance.

Whereas the presentation of fake invoices to undervalue import declarations may not be peculiar to Ghana, the Commissioner said the removal of the benchmark discount by the Government would allow for the application of a universal valuation and classification system of goods.

Similarly, whereas some importers might attempt to undervalue the purchase prices in their invoices to beat down the amount of import duty, there were those who also over-value their invoice prices, he said.

Mr Iddisah disclosed this at this year’s West Africa Soldiers Social Activities (WASSA) and the Commissioner’s Get-Together in Accra.

The Division holds the WASSA annually but had to suspend it in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Customs exceeded its revenue target for 2022 by 7.95 per cent with the collection of 22.26 billion Ghana cedis, more than the GHc20.62 billion target for the year.

On the 2023 target, Alhaji Iddisah said GRA had been tasked with a revenue target of GHc105 billion and the Customs Division was responsible to collect GHc33.5 billion.

He expressed the hope that the staff would take their duties seriously to ensure that the set target was met.

The ceremony was attended by some of the retirees of the Division, which also saw the honouring of deserving officers for their dedication to duty.