The government has fully rolled out a new customs classification and valuation system at its ports of entry that has so far proved to be a revenue saver for the state.

The Publican Trade Solution, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based software, helps customs officers to determine the real value of imported goods declared into the customs system.

Briefing a section of journalists in Accra yesterday about its performance so far, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Thomas Nyarko Ampem, said after a pilot deployment at the port of Tema last month, Publican flagged many declarations that provided an average of $3 million a day extra revenue that would have been lost to various discrepancies.

Prior to that, another exercise with five importers conducted as a proof of concept before the deployment of Publican helped to detect discrepancies in the values of goods declared, leading to the payment of GH¢25 million liabilities by the sampled importers.

The AI application is being used in many countries.

“This average determination works up to close to a billion Ghana cedis just for a month.

So, we project that this system would be able to rake in more customs revenue at the ports of entry,” Mr Nyarko Ampem said.

The Deputy Minister of Finance was supported by the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Anthovny Kwasi Sarpong, as well as scheduled officers from the Ministry of Finance and the Customs Division of the GRA.

The briefing, coming about two weeks after the deployment of the system, was part of a regular engagement with stakeholders on the deployment of the system, so as to straighten out any edges that may be going out of line.

Quarter of all transactions flagged

Mr Nyarko Ampem said since Publican went live on March 11 this year, it had so far endorsed the clearing of 75.3 per cent of all declarations made to customs, and flagged 24.7 per cent as being below the accepted values that pertained to those goods globally.

The system aggregates data from multiple sources in real time, comparing values of the same goods from the same sources to determine discrepancies in declaration or confirm them.

It, therefore, helps customs officers doing classification and valuation to arrive at decisions in just about five minutes, a departure from the previous system when the same task was completed in about two hours.

A decision-making and risk management tool, Publican does not replace the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS), which is the main interface used for declarations, classification, valuation and clearing of goods at Ghana’s ports of entry, but augments other risk management tools and helps the customs officers to make decisions concerning the real values of imports, hence helping to safeguard revenues.

Mr Nyarko Ampem said with Publican, GRA had also introduced a new system where, instead of one customs officer handling a dispute, which could lead to collusion in passing what should be flagged, disputes were now being handled by a committee which sat twice a week.

The Deputy Finance Minister said the complaint resolutions being handled by the committee, which were already part of the customs system, were to curtail individual discretion in classification and valuation decision-making.

Delays resolved

Some importers and clearing agents have raised concerns about delays with the new customs AI system at the ports, saying it sometimes goes down, rendering importers unable to clear goods for days.

Explaining, Mr Nyarko Ampem said, besides the usual downtime of ICUMS that occurred once in a while, Publican did not cause delay but provided results in real-time.

Mr Sarpong added to the explanation, saying that delays occurred in the entry of wrong Harmonised System Codes (HS Code) for goods.

Customs identifies every product meant for international trade with HS Codes; therefore, a wrong code will result in a wrong classification, hence valuation.

The Commissioner-General added that for the past two weeks that the system had been in place, importers and clearing agents had been asked, according to customs rules, to input the HS Code, which resulted in mistakes with some of them.

To further streamline and fast-track the process, Mr Sarpong said customs, with the approval of the Ministry of Finance, would now allow customs officers to input the correct HS codes for various products identified as wrong, but they must be accepted by the importer.

Mr Sarpong said the use of the system by importers and freight forwarders did not come at any extra cost, as the government would bear that in order not to increase the cost of doing business at the ports.

Background

In January, the government announced its intention to deploy the AI system from February 1 this year, to improve and facilitate import clearance at the country’s entry points, starting with the Tema Port.

It is estimated that the rollout would boost customs revenue by between 40 per cent and 45 per cent, while significantly enhancing speed, efficiency and transparency in cargo processing.

It was also to address entrenched abuses in the use of import declaration forms (IDF).