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The Ghana Revenue Authority Customs Division says it has developed a new mobile application to help check the abuse of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on Temporary Vehicle Importation (TVI).

Known as the Vehicle Importation Monitoring System, the new application helps to identify uncustomed cars that come into the country with TVI.

The ECOWAS Protocol allows citizens of member countries of the sub-regional body to temporarily cross over to other countries with vehicles for temporary use for a period of 90 days.

On arrival in the country, the vehicles must be registered with the Customs Division.

Where there is the need to extend the period, the owners are expected to notify Customs officials for the necessary procedure.

However, when the vehicles arrived in Ghana, some owners used dubious means to obtain false Ghanaian car number plates and either used the vehicles or sell them.

Last year, more than 30,000 vehicles entered Ghana under such circumstances.

Speaking to the media ahead of an enforcement exercise, Mr Michael Sakyi, the Head of Surveillance and Operations at the GRA said the application identifies the car number as well as the chassis and give detailed report about the car status.

He said investigations showed that most owners were violating the TVI and those that would be identified by the system would be arrested, prosecuted or made to pay the duties involved.

He said with the new system the GRA would be able to clamp down on importers and vehicle owners abusing the regime.

He said the exercise was aimed at creating awareness among vehicle owners that they would be caught if they tried to deny government of the necessary revenue.

During the exercise, nine vehicles, including Toyota, Benz Cars and Lexus were caught for the violation of the TVI regime.