Customs to assume destination inspection

Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Trade and Industry, has announced that very soon Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) would be mandated to perform the role of destination inspection.

He said this calls for capacity building of personnel of the Division to enable them to discharge this duty more efficiently, "to help simplify trade facilitation and improve customs procedures to increase revenue generation".

Mr. Iddrisu made these remarks when the Secretary-General of World Customs Organisation (WCO), Mr. Kunio Mikuriya, and officials of the GRA visited the Minister, in Accra.

The Minister said government would make available modern scanners at the country's entry points, to facilitate trade transactions and to improve on revenue collection.

Mr. Iddrisu said:” there are revenue leakages and every effort would be made to pluck them to bring efficiency to enable government derive the much needed revenue for national development”.

He disclosed that one of the best ways of improving revenue collection was the establishment of an integrated E-automated system to improve the operations of customs, and gave the assurance that this will be put in place soon.

Mr Iddrisu was optimistic that the World Customs Authority would assist the government of Ghana in capacity building and other infrastructure requirements of the Customs Division.

He pledged the commitment of government to accede to the new convention to improve customs procedures to facilitate trade.

Mr Mikuriya said the WCO was working with the African Union and the African Development Bank to boost intra-African trade, expected to come into force by 2017.

“This can become a reality when trade facilitation is given a top priority, which requires a new role for customs to take the centre stage to fast-track the process”, he said.

Mr. Mikuriya pledged WCO’s support in terms of capacity building and provision of scanners to customs officials to do detailed analysis of goods to facilitate trade, and to also improve the technical-know-how of personnel.

He praised the government of Ghana for supporting the candidature of Mr. Alan Kyeremateng for the post of World Trade Organisation Secretay-General.