Ghana is set to introduce First Port Duty rule before the end of the year according to a recent announcement by vice president, Mahamudu Bawumia.
Under the rule, customs authorities from the country’s neighbouring countries – including Togo, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – will have a presence in Ghana’s ports.
Bawumia noted that this was necessary as there was a significant increase in smuggling through the “use” of transit trade.
“You have people declaring containers as going to these different countries in order to avoid duties but, for the most part, they never leave Ghana,” he said during a media briefing this week.
He pointed out that this was not only a problem for Ghana, but for its neighbouring countries as well as many transporters who were actually moving transit trades would use unapproved routes in order to escape duties in the countries the goods were being transported to.
According to Bawumia, this means that those shipping containers to Mali or Togo through Ghana, for example, would just need to go straight to those respective country’s desks and pay the duties for each country in Ghana’s ports.
This will then be captured on each country’s customs system and transporters can then move on straight to their destinations.
“The reforms that we are trying to introduce in Ghana are to make sure that we become more drivers of economic growth and development rather than becoming hotbeds of corruption,” said Bawumia.
