The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), has stated that reported shortfall in revenue generated in June at the Tema Port was based on stretched targets and not actual targets.

Media reports last month indicated that the Customs Division of GRA at the Tema Port failed to meet its revenue target for July by 45.02 per cent due to the challenges associated with the implementation of the ICUMS at the Tema Port.

The GRA in a statement issued in Accra on Monday explained that stretched targets were targets slightly beyond the budget figures that were set to encourage staff to achieve more.

“It was therefore misleading to compare actual performance with the stretched targets and not actual budget figures to draw conclusions when GRA’s performance is assessed based on the actual budget figures,” it said.

The statement said the Customs Division of the GRA on the average collected GH¢942 million monthly and the average for the three months run for the Tema Collection 2020 was GH¢574.8 million.

“This figure compares with the June performance of Tema Collection of GH¢554 million and does not show any significant difference in collection. The performance also clearly refutes the claim that the deployment of ICUMS at the ports in June 2020 has resulted in revenue shortfalls for the month of June,” it said.

According to the statement , Tema collection accounted for over 70 per cent of the total revenue target for the Customs Division and this translated into a ‘Stretched target’ of GH¢11.3 billion for the collection for 2020.

The figure, it said, was distributed on monthly basis using the previous year’s performance subject to prevailing economic measures and that month on month performance for the first half of the year for Tema collection had followed the national trend in revenue collection.

In April, the statement said the Tema collection had a target of GH¢779.44 million and collected GH¢483.16million, a variance of 38. 01 per cent while for the June target of GH¢1,006.88 million, GH¢553.57 million was realised, recording a variance of 45. 02 per cent.

“This however is not the first time within the year that a variance of about GH¢400 million has been recorded. In March 2020, the variance was also about GH¢400 million. The fact that the ‘stretched target’ was not achieved does not in any way point to the deployment of ICUMS as a factor in the Tema June 2020 revenue collection,” it said.

The statement said the overall Customs performance for the half year was below target due to the closure of country’s borders and restrictions placed on the movement of persons resulting in a slowdown in port related activities and global trend of a decline in cargo movements owing to the COVlD-19 pandemic.

“Even though the mid-year revenue target was missed owing to prevailing economic circumstances, pragmatic initiatives are being put in place to attain, if not exceed the annual target by close of the year,” it said.