GOVT SAVES $8M FROM FREIGHT CHARGES (BACK PAGE)

THE government made US$8 million savings from freight charges on cocoa export for the last season through negotiations between shipping lines and the Ghana Shippers Council.
The Deputy Chief Executive of the council, Mr Emmanuel Martey, disclosed this when the Minister of Transport, Mr Mike Hammah, paid a familiarisation visit to the warehouses of the council in Tema.
Mr Martey said the role of the council was to streamline the clearing of goods and cut down the time and cost of doing business.
He said the government saw the wisdom in creating the council as far back as 1974 to protect Ghana’s exports from arbitrary pricing by shipping lines.
He said the council now hosted some African countries who came to learn at first-hand its operations and the procedures to follow in establishing similar institutions in their respective countries to protect them from shipping lines.
Mr Martey said the council had drawn up a strategic plan for the 2009-2013 period to make its operations sustainable through public-private partnership, which would allow the council to wean itself off government subvention.
Mr Hammah said the gateway policy of the government involved the provision of equipment at the country’s ports to enable many landlocked countries to have no option but to use them as transit ports.
He said the legal and regulatory framework of the council were being reviewed to empower it to play its role in the gateway project.
He said the inland port at Boankra would be vigorously pursued with the construction of a railway line to link it to the Tema port so that goods arriving at the port would be transported there directly.
Mr Hammah said the vision of the government was to make Ghana a middle-income country by the year 2020 and that could not be achieved through the traditional exports of cocoa and timber but through well thought-out programmes to attract foreign direct investments.
The minister, therefore, appealed to the workers to ensure peaceful industrial atmosphere to attract more investors into the country, since the shipping industry had a crucial role to play in the distribution of goods and services.
Mr Hammah also visited the warehouse of the Ghana Railway Corporation, where the government had taken delivery of two sets of diesel multiple units of lightway commuter trains for the Accra-Tema railway line.