Ghana Link, a trade facilitation company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Customs Uni-Pass International Agency (CUPIA) of Korea to improve the Uni-Pass system to facilitate the clearing of goods in the country.
Ghana Link in July 2018 signed an agreement with CUPIA to develop the Uni-Pass National Single Window End-to-end trade facilitation system for clearing goods across the country's various ports.
Speaking after signing the agreement in Accra on Tuesday, the Executive Chairman of Ghana Link, Nick DansoAdjei, said Ghana was using the CUPIA Uni-Pass for the Integrated Customs Union Management System (ICUMS) project.
He explained that the CUPIA Uni-Pass system was developed by CUPIA and used by South Korea to run its ports, was among the three best systems in the world for clearing goods.
He said CUPIA was exporting the system to other parts of the world.
MrAdjeisaid Ghana Link since 2018 had successfully rolled out the Uni-Pass National Single Window End-to-end Trade Facilitation System across the country and had been working perfectly in the clearance of goods in the country.
He said though the system initially was fraught with challenges which had been addressed, the benefits had been enormous, saying "Change management system is always a difficult thing but over time, the stakeholders are now very happy."
"Once we have successfully deployed this especially during the COVID-19 period when our partners had gone back to South Korea, we did the project with them remotely and once we have come this far, we agreed among ourselves, that we think we can go even further with our co-operation.
"Today's ceremony is to sign a MoU between us, accepting to work together, share our resources, technology together, to help deploy this system especially across our neighbouring countries and even Africa," Mr Adjei, said.
He said the Uni-Pass was a robust system and was being fine-tuned to meet the peculiar needs of the country.
Mr Adjei said CUPIA had a good understanding of the customs processes and procedures and with their background and the international standards and technology, CUPIA would be a good addition to our team.
" Ghana Link is an information technology trade facilitation company, providing non-intrusive cargo scanning and destination inspection, but when the world moved from Destination Inspection to a National Single Window system, we needed a partner who was tried and tested and the Uni-Pass system is among the best three in the world when you talk about Single Window System across the world and we decided to partner CUPIA to pick from their rich experience and resources," the Executive Chairman said.
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He said the Uni-Pass system had enhanced the clearance of goods and cargo could be cleared in a day once all required documents had been provided.
The Executive Chairman said the Uni-Pass system had helped to improve revenue collection at the ports, saying the system had helped to block all loopholes in revenue collection.
The system, he said, helped, to promote transparency in the clearance of goods, explaining an importer or exporter could reject the tax bill if they were not satisfied.
Mr Adjei said Ghana Link had won the bid to deploy the Uni-Pass system in the Gambia.
He said the move formed part of the expansion strategy of the company.
He also disclosed that the Africa Continental Free Trade Area initiative had been incorporated into the Uni-Pass system.
The Deputy Director in charge of Legal at the Gambia Revenue Authority, EbrimaSalleh, said his country put out a tender for companies to bid to deploy systems to run the Gambian ports.
He said Ghana Link won the bid to deploy the CUPIA Uni-Pass system in the Gambia.
Mr Salleh said the world was moving from the manual to a robust electronic system to manage ports.
