Executive Secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), Mr. Logan Wort has argued that an important part of opening your ports to trade is looking at declarations.
He cited trade mis-invoicing as one of the leading causes of revenue losses on the African continent.
To help resolve these challenges, he said tax authorities should understand that there would be under-declarations hence the need to bolden the IT and risk systems to combat these forms of fraud at our ports.
He was speaking on the sidelines at the opening ceremony of the 7th African Tax Research Network (ATRN) Congress held at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel on Monday, September 5, 2022.
He said tax officials must be highly capacitated and have high integrity to deal with under-declarations.
Mr. Logan Wort told Rainbowradioonline.com that the issue of origin rules is critical to the success of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.
These rules apply only to African-grown products. So, how do you ensure that goods do not enter the country, get labelled, and then be exported?
Rules of Origin (RoO) are legal provisions used to determine the nationality of a product in the context of international trade. Within a preferential trade area such as the AfCFTA, the RoO specify the conditions under which a product traded between the parties to the agreement can claim local ‘economic’ origin status and therefore benefit from the preferences offered by the AfCFTA.
The AfCFTA follows a general approach to RoO that is similar to the one used in various regional (REC) trade areas, the EU EPAs, and many others.
Preferences are available only to products where it can be demonstrated that they are of the economic origin of one or more State Parties* of the AfCFTA. Broadly speaking, this approach requires that products are wholly produced in an AfCFTA State, or where non-originating inputs are used, that these are substantially transformed within the AfCFTA State Party (or Parties, under the cumulation provisions).
He stated that these are some of the issues that will be discussed in Congress and that from the standpoint of tax revenue, issues such as post-clearance audit and risk management would be discussed.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
