West Blue Consulting, a business and IT-consulting and technology firm has introduced a single platform to boost the operation of courier services in the country.

The platform which forms part of the Pre-Arrival and Assessment Report System (PAARS) of the National Single Window has placed the country’s courier services on the international stage and boosted government revenue figures since last December.

PAARS is an integrated system which cuts down the human elements, processes and duration of post and cargo clearance in a transparent manner. This affords all stakeholders an opportunity to know and monitor every stage of the clearance process.

Before West Blue Consulting introduced the concept last December, courier services had to endure a tedious task as customs officers had to manually go through each of the clearance processes including sorting, classification, valuation, examination and it involved a lot of paper works.

It sometimes caused undue delays and could take a whole day or more for one to clear a simple parcel. In some instances, a client in a quest to clear a simple parcel had to seek letters of clearance from some State institutions and agencies.

The introduction of the PAARS has however cut down the entire process to and it now takes between 10 to 15 minutes to clear a parcel once all the forms have been correctly filled and bills paid where necessary.

With the PAARS, an importer does not have to be physically present to know what stage an expected cargo has reached as the process at each and every stage could be monitored online once the importer has access to internet services.

It is also now possible for a customer to know before the arrival of a cargo, what charges are to be paid so he/she pay straight to the banks and sit at home and wait for the parcel to be delivered. 

Selected Banks that have approval for the collection of payments from declarants include Ecobank and Ghana Commercial Banks.

The Agencies through which the parcels or goods are imported to Ghana are DHL, FEDEX and ARAMEX which are hooked to the system. 

The system also allows declarants who are not satisfied with charges on their courier goods or parcels to protest and subsequently call for review.