Today 26th January, the Ghana Customs, Excise and Preventive Service joins Customs administrations all over the world to celebrate the International Customs Day.  This day has been designated as such by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) to focus attention yearly on the contribution being made by its member Customs Services towards the total well-being of their various countries and the world at large.  I am informed that this is the third time CEPS is celebrating this event. The theme for this year is "Customs and Commercial Fraud".

The World Customs Organisation is based in Brussels Belgium and has a membership of nearly all Customs administrations in the world.   It is the umbrella organisation that provides a platform for Customs Services worldwide to deliberate, regulate and formulate policies to guide its members in their operations.  Ghana is a full member of this body of 164 countries.

Undoubtedly, the theme for this year captures appropriately the focus of 21st century Customs Services.  One main objective of the WCO is to provide the framework to secure and facilitate global trade to enable international trade contribute to economic growth and development.  This objective is narrowed to enable Customs administrations facilitate the movement of legitimate trade so as to improve revenue collection, support economic and societal protection that will promote foreign direct investment.

In this part of the world especially the ECOWAS sub region, commercial fraud is manifested in various ways.  Indeed Customs operations is bedeviled with massive fraud through under invoicing, doctoring of invoices, false declaration or misclassification of imported goods, concealment of taxable goods, outright tax evasion, smuggling of uncustomed, restricted and prohibited goods, money laundering etc. 

It is no longer news, that day in day out, harmful substances like narcotics, substandard goods including medicaments are filtering into our country.  Customs regimes such as Transit, Temporary Importation and Warehousing have become avenues for the business community to avoid or evade tax.

The challenge for CEPS is to derive maximum benefit from the WCO so as to formulate policies that will counter and curb abuses and negative trade practices using available resources.  The WCO is currently pushing for modernisation of Customs operations to enhance monitoring and transparency.  Happily, CEPS modernization programme is far advanced to the extent that revenue mobilization is consistently on the increase.  This year, in spite of economic impediments and speculative market forces, CEPS maintained its position as the foremost revenue agency by exceeding its target and raking in ¢9.311trillion.

Towards the end of the year, CEPS introduced Vehicle Transit Stickers which are at present being used on a pilot basis to enhance monitoring and tracking of transit goods.  Programmes have been drawn to educate the Police, transitors and the public in the use of these stickers.  At the same time, the CEPS Intelligence Unit, the Investigations and Preventive departments have also been strengthened to combat negative trade practices.

We do appreciate that we cannot achieve much without the cooperation of our counterparts in the sub region and more importantly our business partners.  I am therefore gratified that our stakeholders have joined us to mark this important event on the WCO calendar. Once again, I welcome all of you and it is my hope that this is the beginning of another year of collaboration and cooperation in the interest of our common goal; the total well-being of mother Ghana. 

Thank you.