Finance Minister, Revenue Officials Discuss Auction (page13)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah (January 5, 2008)

TOP officials from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) and the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), held a meeting on Thursday to discuss means to auction hundreds of containers of imported goods left to go bad at the Tema Harbour.
The meeting became necessary after the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, had visited the harbour to inspect at first-hand, an unspecified number of containers, marked for auctioning by CEPS but which had been left to go bad because of legalities.
At the meeting with the Finance Minister were the Executive Secretary of the RAGB, Mr Harry Owusu; the Commissioner of CEPS, Mr Emmanuel Doku; his deputy in charge of Operations, Mr Robert Kwami; the officer in charge of Tema, Assistant Commissioner of CEPS Alhaji Mohammed Malifuz Nasirudeen; the Chairman of the Auction Task Force, Mr Martin Oteng Ababio, and other officials from CEPS and the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA).
An inspection after the meeting of the TOA Yard, where about 201 containers had been kept, showed that some of the containers together with their contents which comprised clothing, electrical appliances and mineral water among other general goods, were going bad due to their exposure to the harsh weather conditions over a long period.
Addressing the officials, Mr Baah-Wiredu said it was unfortunate that so many items which could have fetched the country huge sums of money had been left unsold because officials had to follow bureaucratic procedures.
“There are some items which were here when I visited Tema about four years ago,” he lamented.
He explained that an item marked for auctioning must be sold within what was termed a reserve price and when it failed to attract such a price for a second time, a review of the old price for a new one had to go through a cumbersome procedure, which usually took about a year to complete.
He said in as much as the procedure was good to check fraud, a way should be found to shorten the process for early auctioning of uncleared goods at a time when they were still in good condition.
Mr Baah-Wiredu said if all those items were auctioned as and when they came in, much higher revenue could have been raised and the ports cleared of so many containers.
The Deputy Commissioner in charge of Operations, Mr Robert Kwami, said there had been an earlier discussion on the issue to shorten the procedure of reviewing the reserve prices for early auctioning of items which did not attract buyers at an earlier auction.
He pointed out that there was going to be a computerised system at the port to keep records of prices and all items sold at auctions to prevent fraud.
The Commissioner of CEPS, Mr Doku, said the service would begin a workshop to educate personnel on the computerised system to enable them to keep proper records on auctioned goods.
Mr Harry Owusu of the RAGB said so many items had been left unsold for many years because of the fact that CEPS officials were being cautious, and suggested that a transparent method should be adopted to enable the state to derive the necessary benefits from the auction.
He reiterated that the main objective of the revenue agencies was to maximise profit and called on the staff of CEPS to play their role effectively.
The Chairman of the Auction Task Force, Mr Oteng Ababio, said since the committee started its work on October 23, 2007, it had auctioned 120 containers.