Scores of importers were left stranded at the Tema Port today, June 1, when they failed to process their documents through Customs’ new Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS) on day-one of its full deployment at the country’s busiest seaport.
Information gathered by Business24 indicates that most of the affected clearing agents had begun their valuation process through the GCMS, the previous system which was operated by GCNet but did not have their data transferred onto the ICUMS before it was shut down and may have to start all over again.
Others who started the process from scratch through the ICUMS also experienced some technical hitches at some level, especially at the compliance stage.
It took the intervention of a ministerial delegation led by the Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kyerematen, to calm down the stranded and visibly angry shippers.
Commissioner of Customs, Col. Rtd Kwadjo Damoah, addressing journalists on the situation, defended the stance of the GRA to go fully with the ICUMS and blamed the “mess” on the inability of the affected persons to familiarise with the ICUMS when its takeover date was earlier announced.
“We need to dare to achieve; they [importers] were stuck with the previous system knowing that this day was going to come,” he said.
He added: “Once the takeover date was announced, the smart thing to do was to immediately start working on the ICUMS and eventually transition onto it.”
He, therefore, implored the shipping community to get familiarised with the ICUMS because the old system which they were used to was no longer available.
“Now we are faced with reality; and the best way is for them to practice, have people to assist when they need help and get conversant with the ICUMS like they did with the old system,” he noted.
ICUMS is a departure from the previous system
ICUMS is a departure from the previous system where ‘valuation and classification’ and ‘risk management and payment’ were handled by different entities.
“The decision to discontinue the services of GCNet and West Blue was informed by the need to replace the multiplicity of vendors with a single service provider deploying an end-to-end system,” according to a statement issued by GRA in announcing the plan.
“The UNI-PASS technology has been deployed successfully in Tanzania since 2015 under the name Tancis, which the World Customs Organisation (WCO) has acclaimed as one of the best innovative trade facilitation systems. Cameroun, like Ghana, has deployed the same technology after successfully developing its system early this year,” according to a GRA statement issued in late April 2020.
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