Ghana and South Korea last Friday, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote digitisation of Ghana customs operations.
The MoU would among other things, enhance modernisation, ensure trade facilitation and increase revenue mobilisation for Ghana.
Mr Emmanuel Kofi Nti, the Commissioner-General for Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) initialed for Ghana, while Mr Yung-Moon Kim, the Commissioner of Korea Customs Service signed for his country.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr Nti said GRA would tap the expertise of their Korean counterparts to improve revenue mobilisation.
He said capacity building of staff, increase surveillance and strengthened international ties were priorities of the GRA.
To achieve these, the GRA boss noted the need to learn from other institutions for best practices and benchmarking.
Mr Yung-Moon Kim said Korea would deliver the best to Ghanaian custom officers.
While commending the two countries for building a synergistic relationship, Mr Kim called for increased export and import between Ghana and Korea.
Mr Kim Sungsoo, the Korea Ambassador to Ghana said customs service was crucial to the economic development of every country, hence the need to apply proper technology to ensure efficiency and transparency of custom service administration.
He said the UNIPASS Trade Facilitation and Customs Management System serves as the e-government platform for Korea and being implemented in several countries.
The Korean envoy thanked the Ghanaian government for taking UNIPASS through cabinet approval, adding that when implemented, it would offer an efficient and tailor-made system to provide a comprehensive national single window platform to boost Ghana’s customs operations.
The ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda, he said, could be achieved by adding value to exports from Ghana, reducing imports, digitising and modernising the economy.
In a welcome address, the Commissioner of Customs Division of GRA, Mr Isaac Crentsil said modernisation and digitisation were key to meeting voluminous international trade, growing and expansion of economic activities.
He said Ghana had made significant improvement in modernisation, however, the country has to do more with digitisation.
Mr Crentsil explained that the MoU was mutually beneficial as Ghanaian and Korean customs officers would have the opportunity to access various aspects of training and experience in Korea and Ghana.
BY MALIK SULLEMANA
