MESSRS GHANA Link Network Services Limited has indicated its readiness to launch UNIPASS, a total customs administration solution for Ghana, come February this year.
The solution, developed by Customs UNIPASS International Agency (CUPIA) of South Korea Customs Services, would also act as a trade facilitation tool that would be deployed at the country’s ports as the national Single Window System for revenue.
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Expected to rake in more revenue for the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), it is an end-to-end system that will not allow anyone to tamper with figures on it as was the case with the previous systems.
The current systems operated by GCNet and West Blue would be phased out.
The UNIPASS system is an automatically paperless solution, which fits into Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s digitisation agenda for the Ghanaian economy.
Nick Danso Adjei, Executive Chairman of Ghana Link Network Services Limited, commenting on the solution, noted: “The deployment of UNIPASS will allow thorough revenue generation. It is not a rejected IT software system from Nigeria but a world-class, one developed by CUPIA of South Korea. Figures cannot be changed because it is fool-proof.”
Furthermore, he said under the UNIPASS deal, the GRA is due to be in full control of the Single Window System by having access to the operating code of the system.
CUPIA has already trained officials of the Customs Division of GRA who are training additional 3,000 GRA staff to be deployed across the country for the take off.
Also, banks are hooking onto the system to effect prompt payments for services accepted within the solution.
CUPIA of South Korea has consistently been ranked among the top 10 on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Ranking on the Trading across Borders criteria because of the UNIPASS system. It has impacted positively on the economic growth of South Korea. It was for this reason that the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) entered into a contractual agreement with Messrs Ghana Link Network Services Limited to deploy UNIPASS Customs Technology to help provide a comprehensive national single window platform in Ghana to rake in more revenue for the country.
Ghana Link Network and its international partners, CUPIA of South Korea Customs Services, were contracted by Ministry of Trade as ‘perfect’ replacement to operate the Single Window System.
No Judgment Debt
There have been concerns about a possible judgment debt arising from the terminations of the contracts of the two service providers, but there will not be any judgment debts as their contracts have duly come to completion.
It is understood that before West Blue was brought into the picture for the Single Window System by ex-President John Mahama, the application of UNIPASS had been selected for the contract and that at the signing stages, the former president replaced the Korean company.
The Korean company had carried out feasibility study across the country and had trained custom officers both in Ghana and in South Korea but at the last minute the project was switched from them.
Concerns
The previous companies that manned the trade facilitation deal had engaged civil society organisations to drum home their concerns over the UNIPASS contract and fight for them.
Messrs Ghana Link has been awarded a 10-year contract by the Ministry of Trade and Industry to operate the new application. It had paid over $40 million for the UNIPASS software, and was expected to provide a much improved ‘end-to-end’ single window service.
Under the deal, the new operator is scheduled to build a data warehouse where it will keep records of importers under the current system; this paper is informed that there is no data warehouse for keeping track of importers.
FROM the business desk
