COPEC WARNS OF FUEL SHORTAGE …Caused By UNIPASS Takeover

Ghana will experience fuel shortages across the country if government does not find a solution to challenges with the Ghana Link/UNIPASS system that has been asked to take over from West Blue and GCNet, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has predicted.

A statement signed by Duncan Amoah, Executive Secretary of COPED said “Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) and the Liquified Petroleum Gas Marketing Companies ( LPGMCs ) that had orders for supply of fuel to various outlets could not load a single litre of fuel all day on Wednesday the 29th of April due to discrepancies in the migration onto the new customs system ( UNIPASS ) at the depots.

“This situation if left unresolved within the next 24 hours could and will certainly lead to serious fuel shortages across the country”, the COPEC statement noted.

The Ghana Link/UNIPASS system was deployed at the Tema Ports last week after Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Marfo directed the existing trade facilitation vendors, GCNet and West Blue to hand over their operations to the company but it led to a complete freeze of imports clearance and trade facilitation.

Eventually, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), had to issue as public statement directing West Blue and GCNet to return to work as the UNIPASS system was simply ineffective.

The COPEC statement said “the ongoing challenges in respect of revenue settlement following from a decision to migrate onto a new platform (UNIPASS) from the existing GCNet platform is leading to a lot of challenges with petroleum liftings across depots in the country.

“One would expect that the new system would have been rolled out gradually side by side with the old system in order to help in facilitating a gradual phasing out of the existing system (GCNet) but the seeming haste in abandoning the old system whiles the new system (UNIPASS) is not fully ready and integrated is clearly leading to discrepancies being witnessed and we wish for a speedy resolution to forestall any possible shortages across the country”

The New Publisher has picked signals that there is a new challenge brewing at the ports over the UNIPASS system and the situation is a the threshold of degenerating into another disruption in trade facilitation and revenue generation.