The Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF)has protested against the ban imposed on 40 of its members by the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) from operating in the country until they paid various amounts allegedly owed the service.

CEPS listed 161 companies including 40 clearing and forwarding companies and 100 self-declaring companies as owing over 8.6 billion cedis in duties and penalties due to short collections dating as far back as 1998.

The short collection in import duties was detected after CEPS had conducted a post-scrutiny of previous transactions between the importers, clearing agents and Customs.

Mr Frank Sarpong, President of GIFF told the GNA that it was not the clearing and forwarding agents who owed CEPS, but the companies they cleared the goods for and it was wrong for CEPS to go ahead and ban their members for offences they had not committed.

Last Thursday, goods belonging to different customers of the black-listed clearing agents that were supposed to go for warehousing were also returned to the port even though the importers were not among those listed by CEPS.

CEPS also refused to allow goods for which duties had already been paid by their owners to leave the port because they were being cleared by some of the black-listed agents.

He some of the companies mentioned like Cheisons and Ecoplast Limited had produced receipts to show that amounts claimed by CEPS had already been paid as far back as 1999 and October last year, but the company still had its name on the list.

Mr Sarpong said such payments were made not because the agents owed them but that "they simply wanted their business to go on" and accused CEPS of twisting the arms of clearing agents because "they believed they had the backing of the law.

He said it was for some of these reasons that bonds covered the operations of clearing agents and urged CEPS to work in line with laid down procedures.