It said data on non- traditional products such as yams, cassava, coffee, pineapples, gari, cocoa, shea nuts, and textiles among others being exported to various destinations across the world needed to be accurate because it was crucial for national policy formulation and implementation as well as investors.

Mr Maxwell Osei-Kusi, the Director of Research and International Cooperation of GEPA, said this at a sensitization programme on the relevance of protecting and transmitting accurate export data to national development, held in Bolgatanga, Upper East Region, on Friday.

The programme, organized by GEPA, brought together stakeholders from the export chain and was aimed at equipping participants with the needed education and skills to ensure that data on non- traditional exports including weights, value, country of destination, country of origin and others were accurate for exchange.

Mr Osei-Kusi said sometimes freight forwarders who were the main institution responsible for documenting export data entered wrong data on the non- traditional exports in the export declaration forms

This, he explained, casts doubts on the country’s export trade data system and had the potential of creating wrong data for national planning and investment.

“If an exporter gives wrong data and freight forwarders also get it wrong, automatically GEPA will produce inaccurate data and it will be very difficult to measure trade growth and policy direction, on the other hand, if the information or the data that is collected from exporters are accurate then we will get accurate information for proper planning and decision making,” he said.

The Director indicated that the sensitization programme was to train the freight forwarders and exporters to know how to properly document the data and the need to enter accurate information because the data was being used by various bodies across the globe including donor partners, investors and the World Bank.

 “When investors see that the country has investment potentials as a result of accurate data, they would be motivated to invest in the country, which would create more employment and increase economic growth,” he said.

Mr Francis Talong, the Upper East Regional Sector Commander of Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), said the role of the freight forwarders in ensuring that the country’s export sector had accurate and reliable data was critical but most of them had insufficient knowledge regarding their work.

He therefore advocated for strict enforcement of trained and certified freight forwarders to operate, adding, “the export documentation form should be simplified in such a way that it can be filled by any person who will not require so much technical knowledge to fill them”.