Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah
THE GHANA Revenue Authority (GRA) says attempts by IMANI Africa to disparage the operations of the newly-introduced Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS) are “misleading” and far from being constructive.
Management of GRA said it was not true that port operations had reverted to the pre-2002 manual system as suggested by IMANI, noting that “all transactions from June 1, 2020 have been processed through ICUMS.”
Assistant Commissioner in charge of Communication & Public Affairs, Florence Asante, explained in a statement that the manual process was brought in to address transactions that commenced in GCMS/GCNET period but were not cleared before June 1, 2020.
“It was needed because GCNET did not provide data for those transactions in the right format,” she noted adding that “it is inaccurate to state that ICUMS has no established values for customs valuation.”
According to the statement, GRA valuation methods were based on section 67 of the Customs Act 2015, Act 891 and the World Trade Organization (WTO) valuation protocols, pointing out that “over time, GRA has built a Transactional Pricing Database that serves as a reference for valuation.”
The GRA Assistant Commissioner indicated that ICUMS had the Transactional Pricing Database fully integrated into its system, and that “Customs continuously acquires Home Delivery Values Database from the National Automobile Dealers Association (USA) and other accredited international dealers.”
“The Home Delivery Values Database contains information and values of vehicles and also has details of vehicles manufactured from Asia. ICUMS has fully integrated the Home Delivery Values Database into the process flow.”
She explained further that the database was continuously updated as new vehicles were manufactured, and stated that “indeed, Sections 60 and 61 of the Customs Act 2015, Act 891 define this procedure.”
In reference to the vehicle that was purportedly valued at GH¢12,000 in GCMS/GCNET, but was valued at GH¢6,000 in ICUMS, Ms. Asante said “GRA does not have evidence of such a transaction.”
The assistant commissioner, however, stated that the one related to the vehicle that was valued at GH¢14.00 was a case of fraudulent activity by an agent.
“As stated before, in order to facilitate the clearance of vehicles with duties paid in GCMS/GCNET, but not cleared before June 1, GRA created a Customs Procedure Code (CPC) 40D23 in ICUMS to allow those transactions to skip the valuation step.”
She asserted that the agent falsely declared US$1.00 as the value for the vehicle, and claimed that he had paid the duty in GCNET and therefore used the CPC 40D23 to process the transaction.
“The GH¢14.00 was the summation of the Ghana Shippers Authority fee of GH¢9.00 and Ministry of Trade and Industry Import Declaration Form (IDF) fee of GH¢5.00.”
“The system detected the fraudulent transaction at the compliance stage and raised a query that very day. Till date the agent has not responded to the query. The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI) Import Declaration Form (IDF) is not generated for the declaration of used vehicles.”
According to GRA, the combination of these factors is a clear indication of an attempt to defraud the state and “an indication that the system is working as prescribed.”
Customs had initiated the punitive measures as prescribed by law, including blocking the said agent, it added.
“Also, it is inaccurate to say that ICUMS is ‘poorly’ assessing goods. As stated before, the examples of the GH¢14.00 duty for a vehicle and the GH¢6000.00 undervaluation of another vehicle, are not substantiated.
“Therefore, no ‘declarant’ has been begged to pay manually for any difference in duties and taxes. As part of routine custom processes, there are instances where officers observe under-declaration or under-valuation,” it continued.
The GRA management said in such instances, the officer generated a Customs Offence Report (COR), which required the agent to pay the difference in duty to the state.
“The Sector Commander for Takoradi Collection has not, in any way, begged Freight Forwarders to use any new tax code for payment. She rather directed that short collections be paid according to. The risk selectivity of declarations is based on several factors upon which when a container is scanned, a verdict is given,” the statement noted.
The statement continued that a ‘yellow’ tagged item is sent to the examination platform if it is declared suspicious by the scan image analyst.
“For non-suspicious boxes and boxes with green risk, selectivity is released unconditionally without any physical examination. For a ‘red’ tagged item, physical examination was mandatory irrespective of the verdict of the scanned image.
“All containers that are processed through ICUMS after June 1, 2020 are subjected to the appropriate scanning and examination processes.”
Regarding all containers being examined regardless of the risk level, she said that applied to containers that were not cleared before June 1, 2020, adding that Customs had resorted to physical examination of such containers as a matter of precaution.
She said that a full roll out of ICUMS in Tema had just started, and that a team from the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) visited Takoradi to establish for themselves the duration for clearing any consignment including vehicles.
“They established that clearing of vehicle took a day or two at the Takoradi port. The situation is the same in Tema,” she said.
By Ernest Kofi Adu