The Ghana Freight Forwarders Institute has further warned that the government must be cautious in way and manner its handling the Benchmark value scuffle.
According to Mr. Jacob Agyemang, member of the Ghana Freight Forwarders Institute, who spoke in an interview with Kwame Koranteng on Anɔpa Dawuro on Republic Fm, the reversal of the Benchmark value will render the economy counter – productive.
Citing principles of his arguments, he said, most of the manufacturing companies they want to support are not internally generated but rather, most inputs of their production are imports, hence, if the country is not producing vehicles and the government wants to generate revenue and increase local production, but on the contrary, Ghana does not produce cars, so how does this locus is substantiated? To him, this by far, will make the economy counter-productive.
“Do we produce cars in Ghana? We don’t, we are only doing assembly. We support Government’s idea of supporting local companies. Lemme ask you, are these companies inputs and raw materials even locally manufactured? Most of its are imported. We must be cautious not to counter-productive because we want to generate revenue and increase production” he said.
Acknowledging the government’s efforts to rescue and promote local companies, he said, it’s a good idea but questioned if the raw materials are taken from the country.
“We acknowledge the government’s efforts of promoting and preserving local companies but this is not the right approach.
Notwithstanding, the Ghana Freight Forwarders Institute is arguing on why its previous processes with customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority has been declared null and void and thus, freight forwarders who had initially paid for their goods will be required to repay in order for the reversal of the Benchmark value to be taken place.
According to Mr. Jacob, the freight forwarders only received a letter from the customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority on late afternoon of 31st, December, 2021, which means they cannot access the traditional of payments to the customs, except the electronic transactions.
Giving an illustration to back his claims, he said, he had a vehicle that needed to be declared, which had generated a tax billing of Gh26,000 but only to be told to pay Gh32,000 cedis after they told him to reapply to the Customs division for reassessment for the reversed to be taken place.
“ I was supposed to clear a 2017 Hyundai Sonata, which was billed Gh26,000 but because of revalue, we are supposed to pay Gh32,000, which means, there’s an increase of Gh6,000.
Thus means that, the customs division intentionally left the system unattended to, just because of the reversal of the Benchmark value of 50% so they can accumulate revenues from it”
Exclaiming some of the ripple effects of the back and forth agitations on the Benchmark value, Mr. Jacob maintained, this will obviously shoot up prices of goods and services in the country.
