Particular improvements are noted in the overall timeliness of Ghana’s shipments reaching their destination within the scheduled time and the efficiency of customs and border control agencies also showed major improvements.

Reacting to the good news the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of West Blue Consulting and implementer of the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) programme, Ms. Valentina Mintah, said, “We are delighted with these results as they prove yet again the impact that the Single Window Programme is having on the performance of the Ghanaian economy.”

The Single Window System introduced by the Ministry of Trade and Industry primarily provides the platform for an integrated clearance process to minimise the human factor as much as possible and, to a large extent help to reduce the processing time for trade documents.

The concept also provides an opportunity for importers and exporters to electronically lodge their documents, including customs declarations, certificates of origin, invoices at a single location to be accessed by all regulatory and trade agencies, instead of traders sending copies of the same documents to different agencies.
“The efficiency of customs and border management clearance showed a marked improvement of 37 points with previous downward trends of -27 and -17 in 2014 and 2012 respectively, ’’she said.

Ms. Mintah said, “The frequency with which shipments reach consignees within scheduled or expected delivery times (“Timeliness”)” component also chalked up an improvement of 31 points compared to 12 and 17 in the years 2014 and 2012.
She added that many of the improvements noted in the report were directly related to the specific measures delivered under the GNSW Programme, such as improvements in timeliness and the operations of Customs and related agencies.

“We expect these improvements to continue over the coming years as we roll out many additional deliverables under the GNSW programme. We certainly cannot become complacent with these good results, as this is a very competitive environment,” she said, adding that Ghana had made great stride and we must continue steadfastly on this path to secure a dynamic and competitive trading environment in the country,” she said.

Ms. Mintah expressed gratitude to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Customs, the GNSW Technical Committee, partner government agencies, the business community and staff of West Blue who have been key players in achieving this feat.

“I would like to thank and complement all the hard work being done in this regard by our colleagues in GRA, Customs, the GNSW Technical Committee, the partner government agencies, the business community and staff of West Blue, all of whom have been key players in this success so far and most critically, to laud the bold initiative taken by the government of Ghana, President John Mahama and the GNSW Steering Committee for this programme,” she said.
The World Bank LPI report is conducted bi-annually and is based on a survey of logistics users worldwide.

By David Adadevoh