Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority misses 2016 target by GH¢ 495.84 million.

The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority says it missed its 2016 target by 4.6%.

The commissioner of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, John Kudamnuru Vianney disclosed this during the Commissioner’s End of Year Get Together in Accra.

According to him, the customs division was tasked to collect an amount of GH¢ 10,823 billion, however, an amount of GH¢ 10,327 billion was realised resulting in a shortfall of GH¢ 495.84 million.

Despite the division’s inability to meet the set target, he said the amount collected represents a nominal growth of 26.3% of the collection in 2015. He said 2017 will be challenging and entreated staff of the division to exhibited professionalism in the discharge of their duties.

“I urge you all to work assiduously to facilitate the work of our stakeholders who do genuine business. We must ensure that those who intend to invade the payment of legitimate duties and taxes are made to pay dearly for it,” he said.

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta hinted of the creation of treasury and risk management unit at the Ministry of Finance to ensure fiscal discipline.

“I think there is one legacy we would like to leave and is to create a treasury and risk management unit which will see to every penny that we make, ensure that we make it and every penny that we spend, ensure that its value for money. I suspect if we do that, we will both make a lot of revenue and also save ourselves from certain expenditures,” he said.

The Commissioner of Customs, George Blankson entreated the customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority to enforce compliance by educating importers and tax payers.

“Unless the importers or the tax payers know exactly what you expect from them, they will never do what is right not because they intend to do the wrong thing but in a lot of cases it will be because they don’t know what to do,” he said. The private partners of the customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, West Blue consulting and Ghana Community Network Services (GCNET) were awarded for their significant contributions towards ensuring that the division’s activities are enhanced.

Kingsley Abeyie, the Technical Advisor to West Blue Consulting said “we are actually happy about this award because of the amount of work put in for the past one and half years. We worked closely with customs to get to where we are today. So for customs recognizing the effort we put in all this while at this very day, we are very happy about it

He said the full implementation of the National Single window will take this during the year.