Moti, Gcnet, GRA Host 2nd National Trade Facilitation Awards

The 2017 National Trade Facilitation Awards (NTFA) has taken place in Accra.

The award scheme is designed to reward excellence in trade facilitation to encourage actors in the trade facilitation services sector to render first class, efficient and transparent services.

The scheme is also designed to provide a platform for encouraging Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs), freight forwarding agencies and other relevant bodies to work towards the attainment of international best practice in trade facilitation by reducing time spent on the issuance and approval processes of licenses, permits and exemptions for imports and exports transactions to within 48 hours while ensuring safety and security.

The categories of the Awards are: Best Freight Forwarder within the large and small freight classifications, based on the number of declarations per annum; Best Warehouse Operator, Best Transitor, Best Free Zone Company, Best Shipping Line and Best Ministry, Department or Agency which simplified and demonstrated timely delivery of quality service to actors within the value chain.

This year's Awards, the second in a series, took place on the theme: "Deployment of e-Applications for the Efficient and paperless Processing of Trade and Customs Transactions."

It was organized by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI) in collaboration with the Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

In a key note address delivered on his behalf, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, Minister for Trade and Industry, disclosed that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) required member countries to permit submission of documentations-- and other information required for the release of imported goods, prior to the arrival of these goods-- in electronic format.

Mr kyerematen noted that a study conducted by the WTO in 2015 revealed that the implementation of TFA would reduce member countries trade costs by 14.3 per cent.

Furthermore, he said, the study indicated that implementation of TFA would reduce the time to import goods by more than a day and a half and further reduce the time to export by almost two days, which represent a reduction of 47% and 91% over the current average, respectively.

However, he said, Ghana currently ranked 108 in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index and places 171 out of 189 countries in the Trading Across Borders Category of the World Bank's survey of 2017.

Mr Kyerematen, therefore, pledged government's commitment to supporting efforts towards the successful implementation of the WTO/FTA, as well as efforts geared towards encouraging the trade facilitation services sector to render first class, efficient and transparent services.

He outlined a number of measures for implementation under the government's Industrial Transformation Agenda.

These measures, he said, included the Industrial Revitalization Programme (IRP), development of Strategic Anchor Industries (SAI) initiative and the establishment of Industrial Parks in all the regions.

Mr kyerematen said IRP aimed to provide a stimulus package to economically-viable, but financially-ailing businesses and the One-District One-Factory programme, with the overall objective of decentralizing industrial development.

On SAI, he said the initiative sought to diversify the economy which would give rise to the emergence of strong and robust petrochemical and integrated aluminum industries, vehicle assembling plants, pharmaceuticals, palm oil and industrial salt architecture.

Mr Kyerematen said the establishment of Industrial parks would involve the development of Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs); diversification of exports; enhancement of domestic retail infrastructure; improvement of the business environment through regulatory reforms; industrial sub-contracting to link SMEs to large companies; and the improvement of Public-Private sector Dialogue.

In a message, Dr Nortey Omaboe, Executive Chairman, GCNeT, disclosed that GCNeT was close to what the organization envisioned as a seamless electronic system that would be able to integrate all functions within the Single Window concept to promote trade flows.

Dr Omaboe said available evidence indicated that the deployment of e-solutions by GRA and GCNeT had largely been responsible for the removal of constraints to trade facilitation and revenue mobilization while ensuring the clearance of goods in record time--in some instances, less than three hours.

He mentioned documents such as e-Manifest, e-Permit, e-Exemption, e-Business Registration, exchange of data across borders with Cote d'Ivoire as well as applications such as the TradeNet, e-MDA Portal, Ghana Integrated Cargo Clearing System (GICCS), Ghana Custom Management System (GCMS), e-Registrar, e-Shop, e-Payment and TRIPS, among others, as some of the automation processes and e-solutions deployed by GCNeT and GRA in the transmission of documents.

He disclosed that a paperless transaction regime would come into effect on September 1, 2017.

In his remarks, Nii Titus Glover, Deputy Minister for Transport, urged stakeholders to support Customs to implement or enforce the rules for the paperless transaction regime to see full and effective implementation.

Furthermore, Mr Titus Clover said, trust and integrity was critical to the effective performance of the paperless transactions regime and appealed to shippers and freight forwarders to refrain from under-declaration of goods and play according to the rules.

On his part, Mr Kwartein Ofosu Appiah, President, Institute of Freight Forwarders, cautioned stakeholders against the use of administrative bottlenecks to frustrate the implementation of the paperless transactions regime.

The GCNet/GCMS (Ghana Customs Management Systems) currently connects over 7200 players in the trade facilitation ecosystem in a day including Freight Forwarders, Shippers, Courier Companies, over 34 Ministries, Departments and Agencies, regulatory bodies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Ghana Standards Authority and Oil Marketing Companies, among others.

Source: ISD (G.D. Zaney)

Read Full Story