The Vehicle and Asset Dealers Union of Ghana (VADUG) has called on His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana to address the issues of overbearing taxes being imposed on importers at the country’s ports.
VADUG members lamented that the high duties they are hit hard with at the ports is crumpling their businesses and are therefore expecting that the President will speak to these concerns in his address to the nation today, Wednesday, March 08, 2023, during his State of the Nation’s address.
Responding to what the Union expects from the President’s delivery, the General Secretary of VADUG, Clifford Ansu said:
“We expect the President to talk about the duty increment. A lot of tax components have been placed on our duty and as a result, it is killing our businesses. The VAT has now been increased. So it has made a lot of things difficult for us at the harbor…”
Clifford Ansu
Continuing, the VADUG General Secretary noted that the Union as well wants the President to speak to the EOCO exercise conducted last month, where the organization requested for a letter from the court authorizing its seizure of cars alleged to have been stolen.
“We want the President to touch on that because, those cars that according to them were stolen were really examined, inspected here in Ghana and they found out that those cars were not stolen at the time that they were clearing them. And we’ve been asked to pay duties on that, so we don’t see why these cars have been founded for a very long time and President has never known. I don’t know if he is aware or he is not aware.”
Clifford Ansu
Clifford Ansu said there was no way that the President would claim not being aware of the exercise conducted, thus expects of him to address the outcomes and findings from their investigations, indicating that the exercise and announcement made by the EOCO has affected the confidence of their customers, buying cars from them.
“Because of that exercise, some of our customers now even feel uneasy to come to our garages to buy cars from us because they think that EOCO also issued a statement that if customers are going to buy cars from garages, due diligence should be exercised and all that.
“As a result, people fear now to go to garages to buy and these are some of the issues that we are now facing, most of course is putting a lot of dangers in our operations.”
Clifford Ansu
Background to the EOCO exercise
The Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), in mid-February, 2023, obtained a court order authorizing the seizure of vehicles suspected of being stolen and smuggled into the country.
This authorization by the court was followed by a statement issued by EOCO, noting that the freezing order from the court would enable them to seize 95 more vehicles, which according to them will add up to 41 others seized earlier in collaboration with the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in December 2022.
The statement also revealed that the court order obtained would also restrain anyone from disposing of the vehicles – about 400 in number, which were suspected to have been stolen from the USA and Canada were in the country.
The said vehicles were alleged to have been obtained through fraud and other crimes and shipped into the country, with some being displayed for sale in a number of garages in Accra.
The Deputy Head of EOCO, Nana Antwi, addressing the situation said the culprits will face the law. Despite not getting hold of the vehicles, Mr. Antwi added that “they would be taken one after the other”. He stated that:
“We are in the process of asking for special documents or orders to do a publication of those suspected vehicles, we have their chassis numbers and ask those in possession to voluntarily submit, failing which we will draw a plan to get all of them.”
Nana Antwi
President Akufo-Addo, is expected to use the occasion to highlight key policy objectives of his government for the year, as well as provide information on how the government intends to address the economic conditions. Meanwhile VADUG is hopeful the President will in his presentation address their concerns.
