ALONG THE TEMA-OUAGADOUGOU TRADE CORRIDOR

Bribery, corruption and delays have long been endemic for commercial transport on the Tema- Ougadougou corridor. The trunk road from Ghana’s port to Burkina Faso’s capital passes through Kumasi and Tamale, and carries the vast majority of goods destined to the north of the country as well as a great deal of the materials bound for Burkina Faso and Mali. As such, the trunk road makes for a tempting target to officials and semi-officials of all stripes eager to supplement their incomes by skimming a little cash from the truckers moving their cargoes along the route. The trunk road is the only economical route for transporting goods into the interior, and truckers have little choice but to use it despite the delays and bribes they are forced to pay. The most recent report from Improved Road Transport Governance (IRTG) initiative found that during the second quarter of 2009, the average truck making the 1,057 km journey from Tema to Ougadougou encountered approximately twenty-four checkpoints, paid almost GH¢100 in bribes, and were delayed over five hours as a result. On any given day the number of trucks plying the route can reach 120, therefore, the total amount in bribes collected can reach GH¢12,000 per day, GH¢84,000 per week, GH¢360,000 per month and GH¢ 4,380,000 per year.

The cost of these bribes and delays are passed from the driver to the truck operator to the shopkeeper to the consumer – what begins with a corrupt official taking a few extra Ghana cedis from trucks passing his patch of the trunk road ends with millions of people paying inflated prices they can ill afford for essential goods. Sadly, the number and amount of bribes per voyage during the second quarter of 2009 has increased markedly over the first quarter. Trade route corruption is a complex and multifaceted problem whose causes and solutions involve many stakeholders, some of whom are on both sides of the issue. It is essential for Ghanaians to understand which stakeholders are responsible for perpetuating the corruption on the trunk road, and which stakeholders are responsible for eliminating it, in order to focus the efforts of civil society on holding these parties accountable. Who, exactly, is collecting these bribes? According to the IRTG, the largest bribe-taking group on the trunk road in Ghana is composed of the agents who operate the tollbooths and axle-load weighbridges, followed closely by Customs agents and Police officers. These agents are under the auspices of the Ghana Highway Authority (part of the Ministry of Transportation); the Ghana Customs, Excise and Preventive Service; and the Ghana Police Service, respectively. These groups have a collective mandate to ensure that commercial transport of goods for export over the trunk road is safe, audited and properly taxed. However, a lack of accountability within each group’s command structure and between the agencies has allowed their agents to take advantage of their station and extract more money from truckers than the law permits. The corruption along the trunk routes in Ghana, Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, is one of the reasons why West Africa has the most expensive shipping costs in the world.

In order to begin tackling this problem, ECOWAS and UEMOA partnered in 2005 with West African Trade Hub (a USAID-sponsored trade project) to create the IRTG. The IRTG began studying corruption patterns along the major West African trade routes in 2006. The IRTG published its first major study on the frequency, size and type of bribes along several trade routes, including Tema-Ouagadougou, in 2007. The report is now in its 8th edition, and provides a non-partisan and detailed catalogue of incidences of trade route corruption from the past three years. With the dataset available on the Internet to all parties, the origins, size and scope of the trade route corruption problem have been laid bare. The important questions to ask now are: which stakeholders must play a role in abolishing trade route corruption, and what steps might they take to do so?

The IRTG initiative was commissioned in part by ECOWAS, but that is not the extent of the organization’s responsibility in this area. The ECOWAS treaty contains articles that promote the regularization of trade procedures between its constituent nations, culminating in the establishment of a free trade area in the region. The treaty mandates that each Member State (including Ghana) “grant full and unrestricted freedom of transit through its territory for goods proceeding to or from a third country...and such transit shall not be subject to any discrimination, quantitative restrictions, duties or other charges.” These principles are echoed in the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of People. As a signatory to the treaty, Ghana – along with all of the other ECOWAS member states studied by the IRTG – is in breach of its duties. While the treaty lists certain exceptions to “full and unrestricted freedom of transit,” none include allowing highway, customs and police agents to take bribes in exchange for passage on the trunk route. Ultimately, since ECOWAS cannot itself discipline agents along Ghana’s trunk route or rewrite Ghana’s laws to decrease the likelihood of trade route corruption, it is up to Ghana to solve the trade route corruption problem and comply with its treaty obligations. However, ECOWAS’s leadership has faltered, evinced by its failure to implement the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme among the member states almost twenty years after ratification. If ECOWAS were to succeed in removing tariffs on goods transferred between its member states, then the opportunities for customs officials to extort bribes would be drastically diminished. Many stakeholders in Ghana can rightly share in the blame for the increasing frequency and size of bribes taken on the trunk road. Clearly, the Ghana Highway Authority, the Ghana Custom, Excise and Preventive Service, and the Ghana Police Service are guilty of at least implicitly allowing their agents to carry on this illegal practice. Given that detailed information about who takes these bribes has been publicly available for years, these services have had ample time to rectify the conduct of their officers and have failed to do so.

However, the Police, Customs and Highway authorities do not operate in a vacuum. The Police Council, which advises and supervises the police and reports to the President, must play a role in decreasing the corruption that plagues the Ghana Police Authority nationwide. The Ghana Highway Authority operates under the Ministry of Transportation, whose developmental mission includes ensuring that transport over Ghana’s trade route system meets international 3 accountability standards. The Ghana Customs, Excise and Preventive Service operates as an independent agency under the law and, as a result, avoids traditional accountability measures like chain-of-command oversight. Aside from these core agencies and their supervisory bodies, many government agencies have a role to play in reducing trade route corruption. Any government agency with an interest in economic growth through efficient trade, fair pricing for consumers and positive relations with neighboring countries should pressure the President to act more forcefully on this issue. Such agencies might include the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Finance. In addition to these Ministries, trade associations like the Ghana Shippers’ Council, unions such as the GPRTU and PROTOA, civil society organisations and consumer groups can lobby Parliamentarians to implement and enforce efforts aimed at curbing trade route corruption. Finally, the media play an important role in publicising corrupt practices and exposing their practitioners to the public. There are a number of policy changes that the appropriate ministries and agencies could implement to decrease bribe-taking on the trunk road. For example, customs agents, police officers, and weighbridge and toll attendants could provide receipts containing the date, time, purpose, fees and other details associated with each inspection. They can provide them both to the driver and to their central offices. Paper trails like these can help introduce accountability into an otherwise opaque system. Another strategy would be to create complaint mechanisms and legal remedies for victims forced to pay bribes along the trade routes. At the least, this would expose the identities of the wrongdoers for public consumption.

Whatever solutions are employed, Ghana must eliminate trade route corruption in order to comply with agency regulations, national law, ECOWAS treaty obligations, and international standards of trade practices and consumer protection. Every bribe no longer taken along the trunk road is a step toward a prosperous and equitable future for Ghana.

Signed Legal Resources Centre