The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, has ordered the deployment of the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS), also known as the UNIPASS system, at the Takoradi Port effective April 1.
Per the order, the new system will replace the existing customs management system being operated by the Ghana Community Network (GCNet) and West Blue Consulting Limited in the processing of all cargo-related documents and subsequent imposition of applicable import duties and taxes payable to the state.
The Commissioner-General’s Order (CGO), a copy of which is available to Business24, is asking shipping lines to use the new system for manifest submission to start the process for valuation and billings to the shipper.
The directive, dated March 31, 2020 and signed by the head of the state tax collector, read: “All shipping lines/agents are to submit manifest in ICUMS for vessels arriving at the Takoradi Port. All Customs Classification and Valuation Report (CCVR) acquired for bill of entry creation targeting manifests and bill of laden for vessels arriving later than 1st April, 2020 shall be re-processed in ICUMS.”
For the suspense regimes, the directive instructs that for smooth transition, customs officers, working with declarants, Free Zones and bonded warehouse operators, must take inventory of outstanding stocks in the GCNet and West Blue systems for onward migration onto the new system.
All subsequent ex-warehousing processes and duty-free transactions shall take place in the ICUMS, it added.
The decision of the GRA to replace the existing customs management systems with the ICUMS has been a subject of prolonged debate.
Critics of the new system, previously known as UNIPASS, have cited the presumed disruptions that the new system will bring to the shipping community, especially at a time that the ports’ stakeholders were getting used to the current system run by West Blue Consulting and GCNet, coupled with the impressive gains of the paperless port reforms.
Policy think-tank IMANI Africa has already petitioned the ministries of trade and industry and finance as well as the presidency, warning against replacing the existing reliable customs and ports technologies with an expensive and untested ports valuation system.
But according to the Customs Division of the GRA, the new system is “the best end-to-end customs management system available.”
“We want to assure all stakeholders that we sink or swim together, and therefore, in the national interest, whatever we have to do to ensure that we get the best qualitative, real value for money in any service provision, we will do it,” Commissioner of Customs Col. Kwadwo Damoah said at a media workshop on the new system.
ICUMS encompasses five subordinate systems, namely: single window system, clearance management system, cargo management system, information management system, and an administrative system, officials of the GRA said at the same workshop.
“The new system is expected to reduce clearance cost and time in line with the World Customs Organisation’s Trade Facilitation Agreement. It also has an integrated risk management system that profiles the data of companies and travelers so as to monitor behaviour and risk patterns,” they argued.
