The Chamber of Oil Marketing Companies (COMAC) has flagged serious operational issues in relation to the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS) which they claim is causing harm to their businesses.
The Chamber says it has observed a persistent malfunctioning of the system of ICUMS which has been causing serious disruptions in their businesses.
The Chairman of COMAC, Gabriel Kumi says the “malfunctioning” of ICUMS which is causing long downtimes among other impacts is leading to rising demurrage costs hence huge financial loss.
Expressing the Chamber’s frustration to the media, Gabriel Kumi revealed that the downtime is leading to the inability of businesses to offload their products at the ports leading to additional costs.
ICUMS was introduced in 2020 as a single-window customs clearance system developed to streamline and enhance revenue collection, trade facilitation, and border security. It replaced the previous systems run by GCNet and West Blue Consulting and is managed by Ghana Link Network Services Ltd in partnership with the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).
Since its implementation, it has been touted as significantly improving revenue mobilization at the port. For instance, customs revenue for 2021 a year after implementation of ICUMS increased to GH₵ 16.08 billion from GH₵ 12.03 billion in 2019 prior to its implementation. However, the Chamber of Oil Marketing Companies says the improvement in government revenues cannot be at the expense of their businesses.
Mr. Kumi is quick to add that COMAC is not against the system for enhancing tax collection and trade facilitation, however, the repeated failures they have tolerated over a year is proving detrimental to their operations.
“If today I need some orders, I need to load products to my retail outlets, I have to place those orders through ICUMS. So once the system is down, I cannot place my order. We don’t have any problem if that system is making tax collection efficient, we support all that,” Gabriel Kumi recounted.
He added: “But at the end of the day, we expect our members to have trouble-free, no bottlenecks in placing orders. Your system should not be implemented in a way that will negatively affect our operations. That’s all that we are saying.”
The Chamber is growing impatient with the situation and therefore calling on the operators to address the situation with urgency.
“We are calling on them to ensure that whatever bottlenecks, whatever the problem is, they resolve it and resolve it permanently. We have tolerated these hiccups for the past one year. Going forward, we may not have the necessary patience to continue tolerating that,” he warned.
Although the Chamber has not stated clearly what its next line of action would be, it appears mass industrial action against ICUMS which is often praised for enhancing the country’s revenue cannot be ruled out.
