Chief Revenue Officer in Charge of Transit Terminals and Preventive, Douglas Konadu Yiadom, has revealed that government has given the green light to Customs Division of GRA to reintroduce intervening checkpoints to help trace the problem of diversion which has been a major concern associated with the transit business.
Speaking on the GPHA’s Eye on Port programme, he said the checkpoints will serve as mandatory Customs points that will carry out updates on transit-bound goods once the vehicle gets there.
“We want announce that the Government has given us the greenlight to activate some of the barriers that were removed,” the Customs officer revealed.
Head of Inter-State Road Transport Unit of SIC Insurance Company, Anthony Osei Ntiamoah, commenting on the new directive, indicated that the move will help to secure revenues for government in case of diversion.
He explained: “These are not barriers. These are customs mandatory checkpoints that would have to do the update once a vehicle gets there for the collection of statistics.
It will help us know where the goods got before they were diverted. So, I support this customs decision to bring back the mandatory checkpoints.”
But Ziad Hamoui cautioned that this is not the friendliest means of trade facilitation, especially comparing it to other neighboring countries. Instead, he called for the improvement of risk management at source to eliminate the likelihood of cargo diversion.