ACCRA — If a private company is hired to inspect your shop, and their monthly paycheck depends entirely on how many errors they claim to find in your books, will they ever give you a clean bill of health? The answer is obvious to any market woman at Makola. Human nature and business logic dictate that when profit is tied to a penalty, the penalties will always skyrocket.
This is the multi-million-cedi conflict of interest currently unfolding at the Tema Port under the new Publican AI trade solution. While the current Mahama government continues to push the system as a revenue booster, trade experts are warning that the financial architecture behind the tool is fundamentally flawed.
The former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Shippers’ Authority, Mr. Kwesi Baffour Sarpong, exposed this dangerous commercial undercurrent during a live appearance on UTV’s Mpu Ne Mpu. Mr. Sarpong, whose legendary tenure at the Shippers’ Authority led to the passage of the landmark Ghana Shippers’ Authority Act, 2024 (Act 1122), has consistently fought against policies that unfairly milk local businesses. His record includes a bold directive that completely banned the collection of demurrage charges on public holidays or during delays that were entirely out of the importer’s control.
Now, the veteran trade administrator is blowing the whistle on the commercial motives driving the Publican AI rollout. Reports indicating that the private owners of the AI technology receive a direct percentage on every upward financial assessment computed by the system have raised serious alarms.
“If the owners of Publican AI get a percentage on the assessment the AI does, why won’t they ensure the assessments are consistently high so they can benefit?” Mr. Sarpong asked pointedly during the broadcast. “It is entirely about interests.”
This incentive structure creates a direct threat to the survival of local businesses. When an automated system is commercially incentivized to lean toward the highest possible valuation on every shipping container, it ceases to be a fair tax collection tool. Instead, it becomes an aggressive commercial weapon.
The long-term economic damage of this setup is highly predictable. Publican AI has a dangerous tendency to rapidly erode the hard-earned working capital of ordinary Ghanaian importers. When a local trader faces an artificial, inflated valuation on a shipment of essential goods, their planned budget is instantly destroyed.
Because no business operates as a charity, these unexpected, massive costs cannot be absorbed by the trader. Every single extra cedi demanded by the AI at the port will be calculated, added to the cost of production, and passed directly to the final consumer in the local market. At a time when Ghanaian households are fighting to survive, this profit-driven trade policy risks triggering artificial inflation on supermarket shelves across the country.
