A Deputy Trade and Industry Minister, Carlos Ahenkorah today [Monday] interrupted a press conference by the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders to correct what he says are misconceptions regarding the introduction of the UNIPASS system at the country’s ports.
He had stormed the premises without the knowledge of organizers’ of the press encounter.
According to him, his association, with the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) as a member equally made it necessary to attend the meeting to espouse concerns on the system, though he had answers from government’s perspective.The UNIPASS is expected to replace all trade facilitation roles involving the clearing of goods and tracking of revenue at the ports, currently being carried out by GCNet and WestBlue.
The freight forwarders have complained of the distortions to their operations if the system is rolled out.
However the government insists that the UNIPASS is good for the country as it will also lead to a reduction of some port charges from 1% on a consignment of imported items to 0.75% on the same quantity of goods.
GIFF maintains stance on ‘bad deal’
Meanwhile the President of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders, Kwabena Ofosu Appiah has explained that they will rather prefer the government reviews the current agreement to suit the interest of all parties.
He fears that arguments of a drop in the cost of some port charges may not happen considering prevailing distribution model of the operational costs.
“This issue presents the government a glorious opportunity to want to renegotiate the terms of whatever agreement that the existing platforms have already…The UNIPASS system needs to come and run the process mapping, run and code the flow before we could work. So we ask the question why fix it when it is not broken? The IT solution that is being delivered to us today, we have no problem with them,” he stressed.
“Our simple message was to expand the scope of the narrative.We realised that the conversation that was out there for which reason we sought for the introduction of another platform to take over was based on cost and perfomance. We wanted everybody to get a perspective of the conversation that was ongoing,” he added.
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By: Marian Ansah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana
The post Carlos Ahenkorah disrupts press conference on UNIPASS appeared first on Citi Newsroom.
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