Improving Transit Trade: the Ghana Shippers Authority and Borderless Alliance Partnership

According to statistics revealed by the Ghana Port & Harbour Authority (GPHA), only last year, the country recorded 1million tons of transit trade cargo representing nearly 25000 heavy trucks on its roads. Hence the need to give critical attention to a sector with such high economic potential cannot be overemphasized.

As an agency, The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority has adopted several measures to ensure a smooth transit trade, prominent among which was the institution of an investigation along the transit corridor to check the rate of extortion and harassment on the corridor.

The authority also constructed a neatly paved transit terminal which caters for devanning and transporting of transit goods from the Tema port, a move that resulted in a 59% increase in transit trade last year.

Now in a latest initiative to consolidate on the achievements so far, the Ghana Shippers Authority in partnership with the Borderless Alliance Ghana as well as other stakeholders including the Customs, GPHA among others are working to position Ghana to assume its role as West Africa’s gateway and appropriate the enormous advantages of the trade facilitation agreement: the ECOWAS trade liberalization agreement which came into effect on the 22nd of February this year.

In a statement made available to the public, Emmanuel Arku, the Business Development Manager at Ghana Shippers Authority said the authority anticipates the programme to facilitate cost reduction on the corridor which will “culminate into increased activity for traders, freight forwarders, a whole lot of operators so that business will move, everybody will be happy”.

Furthermore, the Ghana Shippers Authority and the Borderless Alliance partnership also provides an e-platform for reporting non-tariff barriers in West Africa to promote advocacy and goal oriented interaction on the problems facing transit trade.

 
In his own words, Mr. Arku, noted that “the e-platform idea came up and we have been collaborating with the borderless alliance to ensure that we have a system, internet based system where operators on the corridors can seek solutions to their problems online and people will be around to respond to those issues by way of advice, by way of directing them to specific places or in some cases resolve the issue out rightly. To us it’s a very laudable initiative”. 
Commenting on the development, Executive Secretary of Borderless Alliance, Justin Bayili said the e-platform was already running.

Adding that “Some of these issues also find solutions actually. Nothing necessarily undetermined on the corridor because we have found out that actually most countries are really interested in starting the platform”.

However, while the effort of these transit trade major stakeholders is laudable, there is no doubt that lots more needs to be done: from the provision of basic transport infrastructures to up-to-date technology that would facilitate more effective control or activity tracking and on that, the government and private sector in general must collaborate.