President Akufo-Addo gets thumbs up for success in paperless ports system

The leadership of CVM has commended President Akufo-Addo for the great success chalked in the paperless port goods clearing systems under his leadership.

CVM is happy that the verifiable data and statistics from the Ghana Revenue Authority, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade and Customs Excise and Preventive Service shows that the introduction of the paperless clearing system has upped revenue by almost GH¢2billion within the fiscal year and likely to reach GH¢13 billion by end of year, a great improvement on the GH¢11.43 billion of revenue collected in 2017.

"We the members of CVM are happy that the near GH¢ 2billion did not end up in the pockets of individuals. The decision of Nana Akufo-Addo led government to commence a paperless clearing system at Ghana’s ports has proved to be a key factor in fighting corruption at the country’s revenue collection points, a major anti-corruption success story".

The paperless Ports system has significantly removed the canker of human interference and artificial bottlenecks created to cause avoidable delays, which hitherto were the hallmark of clearing goods from Ghana’s ports.

According to them, the bottlenecks compelled importers to part with various amounts of money to individual persons so they ‘facilitate’ and ‘speed’ the clearing of goods which sometimes lasted for two weeks.

There was also the challenge of goods being inspected by separate agencies and officials individually and in many cases there were human manipulation to aid under invoicing, under declaring of goods and revenue which should have gone to government ended up in private pockets.

The Paperless clearing system has led to an integration and automation of the various strategic agencies and there is now a joint inspection.

The inspection agencies have also been reduced from 16 to just 3 so as to reduce clearing time, the dreaded “Long Room” has also been eliminated.

However we are not surprised that, there are people working against this anti-corruption tool called paperless ports clearing system.

The unnecessary attempt by some people to frustrate the status quo shall however be opposed and their covet agenda exposed.

On the global front, the achievement being made at the ports has seen Ghana ranked 156 in the trading across borders scoring 54.84 up from 52.32 in 2018 in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report.

According to the report, Ghana made importing easier by implementing a paperless customs clearance processing system. CVM would like to commend the government of Ghana; particularly the Economic Management Team, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade, GRA-Customs Division, West Blue Consulting, GCNET and all relevant stakeholders for their various roles played in increasing government’s revenue at the port and blocking revenue leakages through the paperless clearing system.

This is a fight against corruption and that should be supported and applauded by all well meaning persons, a statement signed by the Founder and President of CVM, Razak Kojo Opoku indicated.