The Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has expressed optimism that effective implementation of a single widow platform will make port operations efficient and significantly enhance revenue generation for Ghana.

Addressing the 6th International Conference on National Single Window organized by GCNet and supported by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ghana Revenue Authority under the auspices of the African Alliance for E-Commerce, the Vice President said "Without a doubt, an effective single window platform simplifies port operations and transactions and it is not surprising therefore that a number of countries are implementing this platform," he stated.

The Vice President reiterated that Ghana’s government is putting in place reforms to ensure Trade Facilitation by removing unnecessary bottlenecks. "Our goal as the Government of Ghana is to build the most business-friendly economy in Africa. In pursuing this, we have taken steps to bring fiscal discipline to the management of our economy since we came into office 9 months ago," he stated.

He said the Ghana government is currently embarking on ambitious reforms aimed at improving the business environment with the implementation of a Paperless Port project which has so far yielded significant results. He also revealed that, it took a political will and corporation from stakeholders to make the implementation of the project a success as government spent no money in realizing that vision.

"Fundamentally, we did this by streamlining processes. The systems were there, but they were still very manual and I am glad to say the Ministry of Finance was very happy because we were able to achieve the paperless ports without the government spending a single penny," he said.

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia urged Ghanaians to support the government as it seeks to bring fiscal discipline to Ghana’s economic management and grow the national economy.