President Mills outsmarts GCNET

Ghanaians are waiting with bated breath to see what the next move of President Mills will be after seeing that the several lies the GCNet management told him has caught up with them.

In a bid to maximize revenue at the ports, President Mills invited to the Castle on May 21 this year some stakeholders, including GCNet and CEPS among others to demonstrate to him how their respective softwares would check the huge leakage in the collection of taxes at the ports.

GCNet, which has been in charge of this particular area of operation but who failed to block the leakage suddenly, claimed they had a new software that could block the leakage.

Though the software, the Ghana Customs Management System (GCMS), was not designed to do valuation, in a letter to the Finance Minister and copied to the Office of the President, GCNet claimed that “… the GCMS is a valuation model…” and that if they are allowed to deploy it “…For a start this valuation verification would be applied to “High Risk Goods” (ie. Goods that attract a relatively high tariff and contribute significantly to revenue collection but tend to be under-valued). These goods include frozen foods (ie. Poultry, beef and fish), clinker, cement, alcohol beverages and commodities like rice and sugar.”

Realising that the software that CEPS had to do valuation comes at a cost, GCNet went on further to offer to deploy theirs at no cost to the state.

“We also do not intend to charge any fee for the provision of this valuation assurance; and trust that this proposal would be favourably considered.” the letter said and further added that “… to help address the revenue shortfalls, we have also resolved to put out on a weekly basis, a number of transactions that do not conform to due process, and which have to be reviewed”

The GCNet letter to the Finance Minister which was copied to the Office of the President ended by stating that once they were given the nod, they will “…kick-start the process.”

President Mills obviously saw the trap that GCNet had set up for him; if he chose the software that CEPS had which obviously could do the valuation, and pay for it, his critics would say he has caused financial loss to the state by making the state pay for something that could have been gotten for free. So, he gave GCNet the nod, giving them three months, from June 1, 2010 to August 30, 2010, to prove their numerous claims.

According to a statement released by the Ministry of Information, “the deployment of the module is to enable GCNet determine and report variations in the values that are assigned to various goods imported or exported”

The statement also said the initiative is expected to help enhance the mobilization of tax revenue by CEPS.

Responding to GCNet's claims, the Ghana Revenue Authority stated that it “…is unclear whether this proposal is rooted in the GCNet contract or GCNet is out looking for a new contract for Customs Valuation.

“The question as to the capacity of the GCMS to perform Customs Valuation was raised, answered and determined at the meeting with the President at the Castle on the 21st of May 2010. The conclusion was that it did not have the capacity to perform Customs Valuation… Consequently, the proposal being made by GCNet is not feasible.

Three long months after the deadline, ie August 31, 2010, that President Mills gave GCNet to prove its claims, the Daily Post can authoritatively state that the company has failed to do so. An official of the company (identity withheld for now) confirmed to this paper in October that they have failed to clean up the system as they claimed. Neither have they done one single valuation simply because as this paper has pointed out severally, the GCMS is not designed to do valuation. Its only function is storage of data.

The claim by GCNet therefore that it would also “…put out on a weekly basis, a number of transactions that do not conform to due process, and which have to be reviewed” has turned out to be a fiasco. The sum totality of GCNet’s lies is that Ghana has lost much needed revenue running into billions of Ghana cedis because the importers and the Destinations Inspection Companies, with no one to check them, continue to short-changed the state; far less tax is being paid by importers for goods imported with the rest of the money finding its way into private pockets.

Now, all eyes are on President Mills to see what move he would make next to stop the rape of Ghana’s revenue that is going on at the ports thanks to GCNet’s lies.

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