Leader and founder of The International God’s Way Church, Angel Daniel Obinim says Ghana is a ‘foolish’ country, because no country that has sense will charge an import duty of 5 billion cedis for just one car no matter what.
Obinim, who bought his Rolls Royce for 300,000 dollars said he was charged a duty of 5 billion cedis.
MyNews could not readily verify whether the amount was 500,000 Ghana cedis he converted to old cedis or not. What we can report is that he kept mentioning ‘5 billion, 5 billion’ as the duty he paid at the port to clear his car.
If the amount is 500,000 cedis, as we are guessing, it would have meant that Obinim paid a duty of over 120,000 dollars to the state, which he says is very outrageous.
According to Angel Obinim, everything in the country is rising in cost and it beats his imagination that he had to count 5 billion to pay it to port officials as duty for his Rolls Royce, an amount which would have been less if he was in Togo and other countries.
Obinim expressed sadness about being a citizen of Ghana and said he would have relocated to another country had it not been for his Church members he loves dearly.
Earlier, a group of importers had publicly expressed their displeasure over the rising cost of duty at the ports which is making their business syffer.
Also, the President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, CILT-Ghana, Mr Ebo Hammond urged government to consider reviewing the high import taxes being imposed at the ports as means of revenue generation and rather focus on internally generating revenue.
According to him although efforts including paperless operations at the port, removal of all physical unauthorized road barriers are helping the country to generate revenue, too much emphasis on port charges will not help improve the country’s global logistic challenges and offer smooth trade and boost logistic index.
Not only that, but Dr James K. Obeng, the President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), also said the introduction of the Common External Tariffs (CET) was affecting their business operations and they were likely to go out of business.
Dr Obeng said import and export duties had doubled due to the CET, making importation difficult.
Source: MyNewsGH.com
