Privatise Customs Service - Yamson

The Chairman of Unilever (Gh), Mr Ishmael Yamson, has suggested that the Ghana Customs, Exercise and Preventive Service (CEPS) should be privatised to stem the tide of smuggling. Ishmael Yamson made the suggestion at a briefing to present to the press, Unilever's performance for 2001 at the Unilever head office in Tema.

Mr Yamson expressed concern about the illegal entry of consumable goods into the country, which he said puts a strain on local industries. Using the example of toothpaste, he said sometimes he is shocked at the price at which imported toothpaste is sold on the market. According to him, most of the time the cost of the toothpaste is far less than the cost of producing the tube alone, let alone its contents.

He said unless the products were given free of charge to the importer and transported free of charge to Ghana, there is no way an importer would sell at that abysmally low price and still make profit. And profit is the reason for which people go into business. He said there are a lot of loopholes at our entry points that made it easy for people to smuggle goods into the country to sell at a low prices and thereby put a strain on local industry or manufacturers.

The solution, according to Mr Yamson, is to privatise the CEPS to inject efficiency into it, both as a way of increasing government revenue and also salvaging local industry. This, according to him, has been done in countries like Pakistan and Tanzania with success. If therefore Ghana will not even privatise the CEPS fully, then we should go for a partial privatisation.

In a related development, the Unilever Chairman has suggested to big companies to design collaborative programmes to pull along the small companies with big potential. He said through such alignment, Unilever has been able to transform hitherto small companies into big ones. This way, he said the big companies can concentrate on their key brands in order to increase productivity and also market shares