Solomon Benjamin, President, SPEG
MEMBERS OF the Sea-Freight Pineapple Exporters of Ghana (SPEG) are demanding an immediate renewal of their licences to enable them manage the export of their produce to the international market.
The members say if the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) fails to renew their stevedore and shore handling licences by March 31, 2021, they will be forced to dump their fruits at the port or divert their cargo to the port of Lome, Togo, for onward shipment to the international market.
The exporters are also complaining about what they termed were unnecessary interferences by the GPHA, which has led to additional cost to their operations to the tune of $245,796 and $283,809 in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
In a resolution passed by the members of the association at an emergency meeting held on Thursday, the group said GPHA must also fully refund the cost incurred to its members.
The resolution comes hours after the Fruit Terminal Company Limited (FTC), a company mandated by government since 2008 to manage the export of fruits at the Tema Port and owned by SPEG members and another partner group, issued a petition to Parliament in support of the approval of Dr. Afriyie Akoto as Minister of Agriculture, who allegedly had been accused of abrogating a contract which could lead to a $50 million judgment debt.
According to the President of the export association, farmers and exporters are frustrated about the biased position taken by GPHA as the regulator to disrupt the arrangement made by government to promote their businesses on the international market and cannot accept the continuous defiance of the port authority to respect their rights to do business at the port without interference.
He said if members of SPEG should move their consignment to Lome, that could potentially affect Ghana’s trade policies especially at a time when government was leading efforts towards the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA).
President of SPEG, Solomon Benjamin, informed the press that the association was “disappointed at the slant which was given to the issue of the supposed payment of judgment debt,” which had been a subject matter in Parliament and which nearly marred the approval of the Agric Minister.
According to him, the Kufuor-led administration signed a management agreement (MA) with the exporters of horticultural products by sea in order to promote government’s initiatives including the Horticultural Exports Industry Initiative (HEII).
In addition, “the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) took a loan from the World Bank to rehabilitate the existing Shed 9 at Tema Port into a modern fruit export terminal which was completed in 2006.
Two years after completion and after several deliberations as to the management of the facility, government, with the consent of the World Bank, agreed to allow exporters to manage the facility to ensure that the cost to exporters for using the facility were as low as possible in keeping with international best practice and to complement their huge investments in plantations and the thousands of jobs created.
According to him, the role of GPHA in the arrangement was to provide FTC with stevedore and shore handling licence to operate and to apply the concessionary rate of tariff agreed to by GPHA with MoFA as contained in the MA signed by the parties of the agreement – MPFA, GPHA and FTC.
Mr. Benjamin said to ensure a smooth operation of the agreement, the exporters contracted Supermaritime Company Limited (SMT), a forwarding and clearing company, to do the stevedoring and shorehandling on their behalf for a period of one year.
“FTC therefore had an arrangement where the equipment and personnel of SMT were leased to FTC at a negotiated fee per pallet which allowed SMT to handle fruits at the port using FTC’s stevedore licence,” he explained.
He therefore expressed shock that GPHA signed an agreement with SMT to perform the same task without informing SPEG.
“…After investigation, it emerged that SMT had formed another company as far back as 2014, called Fruit and Export Terminal Ghana Limited (FET) with GPHA as a 25% shareholder and had allegedly granted to themselves a 25 year concession agreement to do essentially what government had mandated FTC to do and more,” he stated.
This new company, in cahoots with GPHA, had given themselves an exclusive handling of horticultural products at the port of Tema which Mr. Benjamin insisted could not have been possible because FTC still had exclusivity under the MA to handle all horticulture produce going through Shed 9 the MoFA facility.
As a result, GPHA has been reluctant to renew the licences issued to FTC on a regular basis.
He said the new arrangement by GPHA had increased the cost of exportation because exporters were paying more per pallet than they used to pay in the past which was crippling their businesses.
After series of protests, government, through the Agric Minister, decided to restore the previous arrangement under the MA and to ensure sanity at the point of export.
This action, Mr. Benjamin said, could not lead to a judgment debt to a company, whose shareholders included the GPHA.
He said if SMT and its allied company wanted to be players in the horticulture business, they could set up their own farms, harvest their commodities for export, rather than seek to profit from the sweat of the exporters who have invested huge amounts of money in their plantations.
Mr. Benjamin indicated that if the status quo was not restored, government’s flagship policies, including Planting for Food and Jobs and 1D1F would suffer because the export aspect of the policies would be severely hampered by the activities of SMT and GPHA.