‘IMPORT LICENSE’ REGIME IN 2024- GUTA UP IN ARMS

The President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), Dr Joseph Obeng, has stated that clauses in the
new shipping bill that gives the Shippers Authority the right not to register a shipper, or withdraw the right to ship, is
an attempt to bring back the import licensing regime.
Ghana used to have an import licensing regime in the sixties and seventies, but were scrapped when Ghana started
engaging in trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Searchlight over the weekend, Dr Joseph Obeng stated that GUTA was
against anything that will hamper trade facilitation and would lead to hardship for some people.
He stated that the new act, which is yet to be signed into law by the President, provides that importers register.
“They say that we should register. If the registration was for purposes of data collection, we would not be opposed
to it. If it is for instance to identify the number of shippers in Ghana, there would have been no problem. But if that
becomes a permit or license, we are not going to allow that. In the Act, they state that when you apply for the
registration, they have the right to withdraw your registration or cancel your registration. When that happens, then it
moves beyond registration to licensing or permit. So we are saying that in this era and age, we are not going to sit
down to be licensed before we can engage in imports,” he stated.
He said that the new bill, if signed into law, has the potential of creating additional bureaucracy and hardship for
importers.
“Again, initially we had lengthy meetings with them about the high freight charges. We had many meetings over
nearly a year. We went over the many charges at the ports that we deemed amounted to extortion. Then we took all
of that to the Minister of Transport. At no point did we discuss registration and advance shipment information,” he
said.
He stated that another aspect of the problem is that they are demanding that traders bring them their documents.
“But we are saying that you have no such locus, that the only entities with power to review our documents are
Customs and ICUMS. If we have to deliver our documents to them, then we are just creating another layer of
bureaucracy. It doesn’t make sense. If they want information, they can collect that information from ICUMS or
Customs. So we are saying that we would not sit by for another layer of frustration to the ease of doing business.
This thing was attempted some ten years ago. At that time they tried to introduce it some years back, they called it
advance shipping information. At that time Kofi Mbeah was the CEO, and after our agitation, the then government
was forced to withdraw it.
“This is what they are trying to bring back in this attempt,” he said.