Weak Post Clearance Audit, bane of revenue leakages - GCNet

GHANA Community Network Services Limited (GCNet), a major player in all trade facilitation activities at Ghana's Ports using Information Technology (IT), says effective Post Clearance Audit is critical to blocking revenue leakages.

This, the company said, holds the key to government’s ability to achieve its ambitious revenue target this year.

Despite missing its revenue target for 2016, government has increased the revenue target for 2017 by 34 percent over last year’s figure.

Ghana loses millions of dollars every as a result of undervaluation and under-declaration of imports.

The Product Development Manager of GCNet, Carl Sackey, identified managerial efficiency through accurate valuation of imports as well as effective Post Clearance Audit as the measures required to secure the right duties due the state.

He stated that the surest way of arresting the situation is for the Minister of Finance to ensure that the Customs Division of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) conducts Post Clearance Audit on all declarations that have been flagged in the IT system.

Mr Sackey noted that a system that is not effectively supervised cannot produce the expected results.

“We know valuation is not an exact science but then it still comes back to the point that whatever is being done, somebody has to be reviewing the works that is being done so our push is that this review should be done more often and the same applies to whatever is done in the port.

“Somebody needs to review the works of others. In this era of trade facilitation, there is the aspect of Customs Post Clearance Audit where the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, who have oversight for everything that goes on in the port, will actually make sure that they are reviewing the work of the officers because you don’t want to keep the goods in the ports unduly because there is demurrage and the other things that go with it,” he added.

Mr Sackey lamented that even though the company’s system flagged several of undervaluation of imports in the past, little was done punish offenders.

For him, so long as such records exist, state officials can trace officers, agents and importers involved and surcharge them appropriately to serve as disincentive for such unscrupulous acts.

In his view, when importers get to know that even after clearing their goods through under valuation, they can be caught through Post Clearance Audit and surcharged, the incident would reduce or stop completely.

He disclosed that this year, GCNet would be doing a lot more reporting so as to follow up on stuff that goes on in the system.

“We will do more reconciliation just to see what has wrong in the system and get officials responsible to act on it,” he added.

Mr Sackey emphasised the importance of the governance aspect of IT to ensure that the system deliver the expected results.

He reiterated that government can only exceed revenue target through effective supervision of the work of valuation officers.

Government owns over 30% of GCNet.

GCNET has been involved with providing data for the country's Customs Department since the modernization of the destination inspection scheme was adopted in 1997.

GCNET was the first to provide and install the Customs software and indeed has been responsible for managing the platform for the exchange of data since the year 2000.

The totality of customs processed data, national trade statistics and indirect tax revenues as well as traders and shipping lines are all in the domain of GCNet.