Trade Losses at Ghana's Ports: Fragmented agency data and the proposed solution

Ghana’s current trade governance framework relies heavily on post-arrival declarations, fragmented agency data, and foreign mirror statistics to understand its own imports and exports.

This approach no longer meets global standards for trade facilitation, security screening, or access to international development finance.

Across the international system, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and multilateral donors, access to grants, concessional finance, and technical assistance is now explicitly data-driven.

Agencies such as UNCTAD, UNDP, UN Women, UNICEF, and climate finance institutions require verifiable trade, logistics, and supply-chain data as a condition for funding eligibility.

Ghana currently uses and pays for foreign economic and trade data, including Bloomberg market data and European partner-reported trade statistics, to inform fiscal and macroeconomic decisions.

However, this data is external, retrospective, and not nationally generated, limiting its usefulness for donor qualification, risk management, and national security.

The Smart Port Note addresses this structural gap by capturing advance cargo information at origin, before shipment. It creates a single, authoritative national trade data layer, enabling Ghana to:

•Conduct pre-arrival risk assessment and security screening

•Improve customs efficiency and revenue protection

•Meet international donor data thresholds

•Unlock Aid-for-Trade, women’s economic empowerment, child supply-chain, and climate-linked funding

SPN is a trade data compliance mechanism, consistent with the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and the WCO SAFE Framework. No modern trading nation leaves the generation of its trade intelligence to foreign sources.

Implementing SPN is not optional. It is an investment in economic sovereignty, national security, and fundability. Countries that control their trade data unlock growth; countries that do not remain reactive and underfunded.