- January 19, 2023
- Posted by: Kaja Obeng-Mensah
- Category: News
Ghana is estimated to be making an annual revenue loss of about $100million at its Ports. This breaks down to a monthly loss of more than $8.3million which amounts to almost $50M every six months.
These losses according to the Ghana Revenue Authority are partly due to the deception by some importers who deliberately and wrongly declare contents of imported containers with the aid of some Port officials.
This was revealed in the speech by the Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, which was read on his behalf by Hon, Joseph Cudjoe, Minister for Public Enterprises at the opening of the Regional Maritime Sector stakeholder workshop on global good practices in vessels clearance in Accra today.
“I cannot stress enough the effects of corruption on a country and why it must be discouraged among its citizenry”, he added.
The Vice President pointed out that, the Maritime Industry is exposed to the risk of many forms of corruption, particularly with respect to the multi-layered interface with Ports saying “corrupt demands, including unlawful requests for payments to allow ships to enter and depart the port or disproportionate penalties being applied for minor errors can lead to interruptions to normal operations, a risk to personal and ship safety, ships being delayed and or put off-hire and hence incurring higher operational costs”.
Dr. Bawumia declared that Ghana’s two main Ports which are the Ports of Tema and Takoradi play vital roles in the socio-economic development of the nation as does the Ports of Darkar, Mombasa and Cotonou, thus governments should consider the operations of their Ports as very important economic activity.
“Ghana in an attempt to lessen corruption at the Port, initiated the Paperless Port System (PPS) in September of 2017. The system is designed to ensure an efficient and expeditious discharge and clearing of goods for all involved in the clearing chain in Ghana’s Ports. It also allows for the import process flow to be done online and captures relevant Import information on a database”, he pointed out.
The Vice President further observed that there is a compelling need for the Maritime Sector to formalize actions to combat bribery and corruption by collaborating and encouraging all stakeholders in the ship/shore interface to ensure compliance with National and international laws prohibiting bribery and corruption.
He urged all countries and stakeholders present at the workshop to work against corrupt practices by constantly focusing on establishing corruption measures and or improving them when these measures exits already
