By Patrick Ofoe Nudzi, GNA
Accra, July 23, GNA – The Government has laid the Customs bill and the Excise Duty bill which when passed by Parliament will help prevent evasion of duties and diversion of goods into the domestic market without the requisite taxes.
Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, said the bills are being laid before Parliament after a comprehensive review and urged the legislators to give the bills expeditious consideration they deserve for quick implementation of reforms.
Speaking at the 2026 Mid-Year Budget Review on the floor of Parliament, he said the new bills were part of Mid-Year Fiscal Policy to ensure that trade facilitation never became a vehicle for tax evasion.
“Between 2020 and 2025, while 63 per cent of taxable imports entered directly into home consumption, the remaining 37 percent passed through the customs suspense framework, including warehousing, transit, temporary admissions and free zones,” he noted.
Dr Forson said the procedures existed to facilitate legitimate trade, however, they had increasingly been exploited to evade duties and divert goods into the domestic market without paying taxes.
He said some Ghanaian manufacturers were being forced to compete with imported goods that entered the domestic market through tax evasion, adding that it had placed an unfair burden on every law-abiding Ghanaian business.
The Finance Minister said the Customs Bill when passed into law would introduce bold reforms to close the loopholes and restore the integrity of Ghana’s customs administration.
“To curb the abuse of the warehousing framework, Government will introduce statutory maximum warehousing periods as follows: Perishable goods – three months; General goods – six months; and Raw materials – twelve months,” he added.
Dr Forson also stated that re-warehousing would be restricted to a maximum of six months, ending the practice of rolling warehousing and every bonded warehouse would be required to operate electronic inventory systems linked to Customs to enable real-time monitoring and audit control.
He said: “Mr Speaker, these are not merely administrative adjustments. They are structural reforms designed to accelerate revenue collection, reduce port congestion, improve compliance and provide greater certainty for legitimate businesses.”
GNA
Reporter: Patrick Ofoe Nudzi
Email [email protected]
Edited by Samuel Osei-Frempong
Caption: pictures attached