GNCCI begins automation of issuance of Certificate of Origin next week

April 08, 2011
Accra, April 8, GNA - Mr Seth Adjei-Baah, President of Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI), on Friday called on the business community, especially producers to register their products with the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) to take advantage of duty free entry into the West African Market.

He said apart from other benefits, the ETLS would accelerate the pace of industrialisation in the sub-region and pledged the Chamber's commitment to assist enterprises with their applications to obtain ECOWAS status for their products.

Mr Adjei-Baah was speaking at a press launch of the automation of the process of issuing certificate of origin to cover exports from Ghana.

The automation and computerization process was done by GNCCI in collaboration with Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority and Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet).

He said the new process would begin from Friday, April 15, to facilitate exports from Ghana than the manual process.

"The manual process usually takes two weeks but the automation would process everything within 24 hours," he said.

Mr Adjei-Baah said it was known in international trade that goods exported from developing countries entered the economic blocks of developed markets at preferential duty rates through the Certificate of Origin.

He said in this electronic age of e-commerce and e-governance the Chamber considered it appropriate to automate the process to gradually reduce the time, to obtain the Certificate thereby contributing to the enhanced service to the exporting community.

Mr Prosper Adabla, First Vice President of GNCCI, said the system would reduce fraud and unnecessary delays that associated with the manual system.

He said they had offices and authorized officials throughout the country to assist the exporters for a fee of 50 Ghana Cedis.

Mr Adabla said currently Aflao did not have an office but plans were underway to establish one in future.

"For now all goods passing that route would be registered at Accra-Tema offices," he added.

GNA