The Association of Customs House Agents Ghana, ACHAG, has held its maiden Annual General Meeting since its formation some six years ago.
ACHAG has a national objective of ensuring maximum revenue mobilization to the state through education of its members.
The maiden AGM was under the theme digitalization of customs processes-tool for revenue mobilization.
Speaking at the event, a deputy Commissioner of Customs in charge of Suspense Regime, Emmanuel Ohene said the injection of automation in the port clearance chain has helped in the trade facilitation and revenue mobilization drive of government.
He commended stakeholders in the port business for the fruitful partnership that has been achieved and assured that more capacity building programs would be initiated for them to ensure they are abreast with more innovations that would be introduced.
“Through the automated processes, our way of doing business has improved. Now the use of IT tools is no longer an alien to the industry because it is a must have tool to ensure that your processes can be conducted in a transparent, efficient and cost saving manner,” he said.
The President of ACHAG, Yaw Kyei commended port operators for the rapid transformation at the Port which has taken out all the inefficiencies.
“There have been much discipline and improvement at the ports. Though not totally satisfying the level of compliance at the port is very high. We can attribute these successes to the conscious efforts authorities have made over the years to bring sanity at the port aimed at maximizing state revenue,” he said.
He charged freight forwarders to desist from activities that would cause revenue loss to the state.
A deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Oheneba Dokua Asiamah-Adjei, said the introduction of electronic payment systems at the port has ensured the ease of duty payments as part of government’s digitalization drive.