UNIPASS contract is driven by ulterior motives – Isaac Adongo

Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga Central constituency Isaac Adongo has pointed to ulterior motives as reasons for the government’s decision to push Ghana Link and UNIPASS to take over the revenue mobilisation contract at Ghana’s ports from West Blue and GcNet under an Integrated Customs Management Systems (ICUMS).

Though the GcNet contract ends in 2023 while the West Blue contract expires in 2020, government through the Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo has instructed importers to start working with UNIPASS, a Korean company ports services system.

The decision to rollout UNIPASS/ICUMS at the Takoradi ports has been met with resistance from freight forwards who have said the new system is inefficient and creating lots of problems.

According to Isaac Adongo, Ghana Link/UNIPASS have no proper track record in the business of management ports services and has no record of verifiable superior systems that they are ready to deploy in Ghana or deployed elsewhere.

He stated that the closest anyone can affiliate Ghana Link to port services delivery is through its subsidiary, Africa Link Inspections Company Ltd (ALIC) in Sierra Leone while indicating that: “GCNET/West Blue system has been audited by both local and international agencies and has been acclaimed globally for its robustness and efficiency. The system has received some of the highest ISO certifications for this as well as several local and international awards. West Blue, for instance, has won some of the most recognized national and international awards, including the World Customs Organisation’s International Best Practice Award, the National Information Technology Development e-Governance Award 2015, the Anas Aremeyaw Anas Transparency Award at the 2017 Ghana Shippers Awards and the Best Technology and Innovative Award at the 2017 Ghana Maritime and Shippers Award.”

The NDC MP argued that In 2015, the solutions of GcNet and West Blue were combined to provide an integrated end-to-end processing platform to deliver the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW), the Ghana Customs Management System (GCMS) and its Trade Facilitation Single Window Platform (TFP) -components to meet ISO 9000 and 27000 certification standards. The integration proved successful, resulting in government revenues consistently rising (except in 2019 when government reduced benchmark values at the ports) to the admiration of all governments.

The data he said “shows that customs revenue generated through the system rose from GHC7.5 billion in 2015 to about GHC13.2 billion in 2018. This represented an accumulated growth in customs revenues between 2015 and 2018 of about 76%.

Mr. Adongo wondered why government would abandon an efficient system that has been tried, tested and proven to be efficient, cheaper and go for a system that has no track record of superior delivery yet at a higher cost.

“In spite of these negative factors, our government led by President Akufo-Addo has decided to replace companies that have been delivering improved services and revenues; companies that are acclaimed globally for their capacity and transparency (as shown by the awards mentioned earlier), with a company that has been found not only to be incompetent and incapable of delivering a Single Window system, but also allegedly, very corrupt.

The only reason this can happen is when there are ulterior motives,” he insisted.

He warned that government will lose significant revenue if it proceeds with the rolling out of the Ghana Link/UNIPASS system.

“It is sacrificing a collective and national good for an individual’s selfish and heartless gains. That is why the continuous push of this project makes it obvious that the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government is recklessly trying to erode the gains that successive governments have made in trade facilitation in Ghana. This GCNET/West Blue concept is one of the only projects that each government in the Forth Republic has built upon. The Akufo-Addo government will be the only one to depart from this. And strangely, they are doing so, so recklessly that the potential of saddling the country with substantial judgment debt couldn’t be higher. My believe is that the puppet masters pulling the strings for this transaction could only be motivated by what they stand to gain privately. Those people must be reminded that dawn is on the horizon and they will answer,” he stated.