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The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has approved the government's decision to review the country's import duties regime.
President Akufo-Addo's announcement follows complaints and petitions from importers and other stakeholders about high tariffs, which they said made the country's ports uncompetitive.
Dr Godfried Okoh-Appiah, area commander for Tema's customs division, said the review would help increase cargo volumes and generate high income.
Dr. Okoh-Appiah, who was speaking to members of the Ghana Association of Journalists' Association, Tema Chapter, said it would also help fight smuggling because people are turn to the clandestine introduction of goods into the country to avoid the payment of high tariffs.
"The badumption is that people can not import goods because of high fees, if the rights are made a little reasonable for them, there will be no contraband."
According to him, there were goods on the market that did not pbad through the port, evidence of smuggling due to high import duties, adding that even though smuggling was a risky venture, the perpetrators were caught , paid 300% of the rights as a penalty, always committed to avoid paying high fees.
He observed that his holding was 13% lower than the target set in 2018 because, according to him, the flow of goods was low, the number of declarations having decreased by 9%.
The sector commander further revealed that in January 2019, he had exceeded his target of 3.6%, a feat that had not been accomplished since 2006, adding however that it was not necessary. 39, had not reached the target set for February.
Dr. Okoh-Appiah revealed that as of this month, Customs would reduce the number of cargoes to physically examine from 75% to 30% in order to allow faster customs clearance.
He added that 30% of shipments would also be subjected to a non-intrusive examination, while the remaining 40% would be considered clean would not be checked or swept.
He explained that rigorous risk management would be used to determine which shipments would be physically examined, non-intrusive or non-digitized.
The sector commander also said his team was preparing to move to MPS Terminal 3, which was scheduled to begin operations in June, when all container clearance operations will take place.
He added that customs officers would not be scattered in other ports, adding that agents were being trained as image badysis badysts to work on terminal three containers.
Mr. Dominic Hlordzi, President of the GJA -Tema Section, called for the establishment of strong relations between the GRA and the media professionals of the region.
-GNA
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