The President of the Chamber of Freight and Trade (CFT), the body with members directly involved in the Port business has chimed into the ongoing controversy over the contracting of South Korean company, CUPIA (UNIPASS), to operate the country’s single window port management system.

Mr. Dennis Amfo-Sefah, has debunked the misinformation about the 10-year contract saying, the decision is rather a masterstroke from President Akuffo Addo.

“Government is simply rolling out a single-window platform by making UNIPASS takeover the duplicitous services being provided by CTN-Ghana, West Blue and the Ghana Community Network (GC-Net). All the government is doing is instituting a sole service provider for trade facilitation at the ports”, Mr. Amfo-Sefah said.

According to him, the decision is a masterstroke because it breaks away with the past situation when the government had for a long time been bogged down with cantankerous trade documentation at the country’s exit points.

“Gone are the days when we had ASYCUDA (Automated Systems for Customs Data Collection) which came with a lot of paper trade and export documentations,” he said.

Tracing the antecedence of Ghana’s port management system, he said Customs first moved to the first generation of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) introduced by GC -Net. This dip help relief port managers from the conundrum of rationalizing documentation.

“The second generation of the electronic data interchange system which we are currently running is a web-based platform which has come a long way to help trade facilitation.

“over the years, government has tried to introduce new technologies; that is IT, into the country’s clearance system. That is why we currently have three vendors providing almost the same service to the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), GC-Net, West Blue and CTN,” said Mr. Amfo-Sefah.

The Chamber of Freight and Trade President explained that the government’s introduction of UNIPASS therefore, is a masterstroke that eliminates all sorts of anachronistic paperwork at the port.

“The Government in its own wisdom thinks that the time has come to introduce a single vendor to unify all activities and services that are provided by all these three vendors onto one single system hence the introduction of UNIPASS”, he added.

Being President of the Freight and Trade Chamber, his position debunks impressions that have been created that all freight forwarders and other workers at the various ports of the country are not in support of the Government’s move.

UNIPASS, which has Ghana Link Network Services as its local partner, was in March 2018 awarded $40 million 10-year window contract to provide paperless services at the port.
The contract since then has remained a subject of controversy.

But according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), the introduction of UNIPASS is expected to make the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) more comprehensive.

In addition, the UNIPASS system will include a clearance management system, a cargo management system, an information management system and an administration system.

The UNIPASS is a new port clearing system that processes documents and payments through one window. This, implementers say, will be a departure from the previous system where valuation and classification, risk management, payment, documents verification, cargo clearance were handled by different entities.

The system being spearhead by Ghana Link Service Ltd, in collaboration with Ghana Customs UN-PASS International Agency (CUPIA) of Korean Customs Service, the designer of the system, will replace the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAARS) and the Ghana Customs Management Systems (GCMS) jointly operated by the Customs division, the Ghana Community Network Service (GCNET) Ltd and West Blue Consulting. CUPIA Korea, which is assisting the Customs Division to implement the UNIPASS system has described it as an enhanced single window system for trade facilitation.