Madam Sharon Quaye, Collector and officer in charge of the Diplomatic shop-duty free at the KIA, on Tuesday called for some form of restriction on items that were imported into the freezones so as not to kill local initiatives.
She noted that although the focus of the freezones regime was to provide employment and boost local industries, some freezones developers still imported items that could be found locally, such as artifacts and traditionally made bags into the freezone to be exported.
This, she said, did not bode well for local industries.
Madam Quaye was speaking on ‘a suspense regime: freezones' at a day's seminar organized by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) Customs Division to educate their stakeholders on tax regimes.
She explained that the freezone formed one of the international customs regimes also known as the Suspense Regime; a system which allowed imported goods to undergo processing or further treatment, including domestically produced goods or local importation for eventual exportation or re-exportation.
She noted that no duties or taxes were paid upfront on such goods unless it fell within the customs territory. These regimes include warehousing, transit goods and transshipment.
A customs freezone is an isolated area, building or place within a country considered by law to be outside the customs territory of that country.
Madam Quaye said the freezone presented several benefits to freezone developers as well as the country, including attraction of foreign direct investment, creation of employment, total exemption from payment of direct and indirect duties and levies on all imports and exports from freezone and total exemption of freezone developers from payment of income tax on profits for 10 years, among others.
She noted, however, that a major challenge they faced in their work was the unavailability of modern ICT and connection to the GCNET system, which meant that they had to monitor and control goods manually, which also allowed for mistakes and called for policy makers to make real efforts to introduce modernity into freezone operations as stipulated by the revised Kyoto Convention.