According to him, no government will conceive and implement a policy that will collapse the businesses of its own people so “we should rather look out for the inherent opportunities in the paperless transaction and not just sit and say we cannot do anything.”

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview, he said global trends as well as the need to take advantage of technology to maximise profit make the paperless regime a good platform for local companies to stay competitive in a fast paced global shipping environment.

Mr Gbati, whose company deals in shipping, clearing, forwarding and haulage, said already the speed of work had increased at the ports” which means that you don’t waste your own time and that of clients” and hoped that issues like the generation of weigh bills at the terminals would be quickly resolved.

He said, ”Shipping has become capital intensive so people who rely heavily on manual work should rethink their strategy. I personally think that any business concern should from time to time forecast to cut down cost by either redeploying labour or reducing human intervention in operations.”

“It is a matter of re-aligning, re-deploying human resources and logistics as well as fine tuning computer systems and connectivity to match the volume of information to be sent and download. It is up us to up our game by providing logistics to facilitate our work because government can not provide trucks to cart your goods at the harbour or computers to process your information while you are engaged in a profit oriented business venture, “he said.

He called on government to see to the logical conclusion of the paperless transaction by assigning roles which do not overlap and also monitor and evaluated the process to eliminate all blockages abuses.