Customs Revenue Officer (CRO), Samuel Akrofi, the acting Head of the Ghana Customs Laboratory, Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), says Ghana is working towards harmonising trade processes under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

He said, “Regional harmonisation of trade processes is something that is going on, and Ghana is working with the West African Customs Unit to be able to harmonise our trade processes so that they are seamless.”

He said this at a media forum powered by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) on the topic “Enhancing Trade Facilitation and Security, Ghana Customs Commitment to Efficiency, Innovation, and Economic Growth.”

He said harmonising the trade process would enable Customs to know the true origin of goods arriving in the country, ensuring that they come from a destination country within Africa.

He indicated that Africa as a regional bloc identified that it must trade among itself as the only way to grow its industries and become a formidable force, noting that Africa has a lot of resources for itself and the rest of the world.

He explained that AfCTA was for quota-free and duty-free movement of goods among Africans, and the cardinal document that secured Africa from the influx of goods that might find themselves on transhipment was the Certificate of Origin.

“So, the process of validating and scrutinising the Certificate of Origin is key to ensuring that the goods that we are trading among ourselves are originally originating from Africa,” he stressed.

According to him, Ghana has made it very clear that it supports the electronic certification of the Certificate of Origin so that once they are generated electronically, it will help take care of the challenge of outsiders bringing such goods, attesting to the fact that they come from Africa while they did not come from the continent.