Reverend Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), has disclosed that more than GH¢3.98 million has been raised from online auctions in two months.

The amount, marking a cumulative 41 percent revenue increment, was from 44 vehicles and 13 general goods, auctioned through the electronic auction (e-auction) platform of the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS).

The e-auction allows traders to take part in the auction process online and put in their bid in the open through ICUMS – Ghana’s single window electronic customs trade and revenue mobilisation tool.

For the 44 vehicles auctioned, the e-auction system saw a bid price of GH¢2.12 million, an increase of 10.2 percent from the reserve price of GH¢1.92 million.

The 13 general goods also saw the GRA rake in a revenue of GH¢186,640.00, an increase of 30.8 percent, from the reserve price of GH¢148,640.00.

Rev Owusu-Amoah said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of a visit by officials from Ghana Link Network Services Ltd. Network Services Ltd., and Customs Uni-Pass Agency of Korea (CUPIA), implementing partners for the project.

Commenting on this, the Commissioner-General said, “Since we introduced the e-auction, which is even on the pilot phase, we have seen significant improvement in the returns we get from the auction of cars and goods.”

“The last two we did for the goods, we received more than the reserve price for the total cost of the goods that were auctioned, and it was a significant deviation from the previous times since the E-auction was introduced,” Rev Owusu-Amoah added.

On the ICUMS implementation, he said, though there were some challenges at the start, there have been enhancement in at the port, increased efficiency and compliance and enabled traders to send their money fast and know their details and pay before their goods arrived at the port.

Rev Owusu-Amoah also said: “ICUMS has also helped increase revenue – we’ve sealed a lot of the loopholes as a result of the introduction of ICUMS though we admit that there’s continuous improvement that we need to do.”

“The ICUMS system generally has been excellent so far, we have seen significant improvement in our revenue generation, improved efficiency and received commendations from our stakeholders – importers, exporters and freight forwarders,” he said.

He said that GRA, together with its partners have been reviewing various models under ICUMS, noting that between 2021 and 2022, have about five models added to the system to further enhance operational efficiency.

The Commissioner-General said the Authority was looking forward to a stronger relationship between Ghana Link and Customs Uni-Pass Agency of Korea (CUPIA) to learn and make GRA run the system as much as possible.

Kim Yoon-Shik, Chairman, CUPIA, expressed CUPIA’s appreciation to GRA and Ghana Link for the partnership and support for the successful implementation of ICUMS.

He said: “Through the close cooperation between the two organisations, we hope to contribute to the development of Ghana and Africa, by supporting the modernisation of their customs administration.”