PARLIAMENT HAS passed into law the Customs (Amendment) Bill, 2020 that is seeking to amend the Customs Act, 2015 (Act 891) to provide incentives for automotive manufacturers and assemblers under the new automotive policy, Ghana Automotive Manufacturing Development Programme (GAMDP).
The new law, which prohibits the importation of salvaged motor vehicles and specified motor vehicles over 10 years of age, will also increase the import duty on specific motor vehicles and provide import duty exemptions for the security agencies and officers of the security agencies.
It is to help in the industrial transformation agenda of government, as some major vehicle manufacturers, including Toyota, Nissan and Volkswagen Nissan, have shown interest in the nation’s new automotive policy intended to boost employment and offer an import substitution for the country.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, during the debate on March 3, urged the lawmakers to approve the new automotive policy.
He argued that Ghana was importing over 100,000 vehicles every year, which amounted to an import bill of $1.14 billion, representing 12 per cent of the nation’s import bill, and only 10,000 of the figure.
“As a government that is seeking to enhance industrial transformation based on our parallel strategy of export enhancement and import substitution, there could be no better testimony in implementing this policy than to be able to reduce the import of vehicles by producing substitutes locally,” he argued.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament (MPs) for Ho Central and Tamale Central, Benjamin Kpodo, and Alhassan Fuseini Inusah, had suggested that the amendment bill ought to be put aside as it would push used vehicles dealers out of business.
But the Trade Minister disagreed and said the MPs were making those suggestions because they had not yet considered the support given to existing local assembling companies and the benefits that would be enjoyed by used vehicle dealers.
“Why would we want to industrialize but at the same time want to create jobs for the automobile industry in other countries?” he asked rhetorically, and stated that it is not by accident that all the leading economies in the world are countries with strong anchors in the automobile manufacturing industry.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House