The Importers and Exporters Association is appealing to the government to increase the newly announced discount to be applied to the benchmark values for the importation of vehicles from 10 percent to 20 percent.
The appeal comes after the government’s announcement of a new 30 percent discount on the benchmark values of all imported goods and a 10 percent discount for vehicles from the initial discount of 50 percent and 30 percent respectively.
Samson Assaki Awingobit, the Executive Secretary of the Importers and Exporters Association, said “I made it clear to the minister that if you can bring them to 20 percent, that wouldn’t be bad or 40 or 30 percent for general cargo.”
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“I don’t know whether after our submission if the government will come up with a report and if they will push it up to 20 or 15 percent on vehicles,” Mr. Awingobit said to Citi News.
He further expressed concern that the change in policy could spark smuggling.
“We have to treat it cautiously. We don’t want a situation where people will start smuggling goods through the borders. We want everybody to bring goods from the port.”
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), however, said it will do further checks to see how beneficial the development is.
“We need to simulate this 30 percent within our cost structure to determine whether it is competitive, so we are engaging government in this discussion,” its president, Dr. Humphrey Ayim-Darke, said to Citi News.
“It needs to be simulated within the various cost structures of the various sectors of our domain. That is when you know whether the figures coming out are sustainable.”
Meanwhile, the President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), Dr. Joseph Obeng, expressed satisfaction with the compromise in the implementation of the policy but said “The government should have given us a reasonable discount, not reversing the whole 50 percent”.
“We cannot be entrenched all the time, and we cannot have it all, so we are very grateful to the government for this gesture.”
