Indications are that the drop in the customs revenue generation may be attributed to the failure of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) and the automobile policy.
This was disclosed by the President of the Shippers’ Association Lagos State (SALS) Rev. Jonathan Nicol to newsmen in Lagos.
Nicol said that government should be sensitive in its policy presentation, especially ones that could affect the economy.
According to Nicol, “People are not paying duties, they don’t have the Pre- Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) when they started Pre-Release of items in the absent of PAAR, there was a little bit improvement, then suddenly they stopped.”
“No system is perfect, every system has its own hiccups but where a system is actually affecting the revenue of a country, it has to be looked into critically,” He lamented.
He however noted that the revenue of Customs will continue to drop because importers and agents are not getting PAAR to pay the required duty on their consignments
“Customs should please release people’s consignment without the PAAR because importers are finding it difficult to clear cargoes out of the ports due to delay in customs duty and it is not a new thing for the stakeholders that Nigerian Customs were actually doing their jobs without the PAAR regime.”
Reacting to the government automobile policy, Nicol stressed that government policy has affected the revenue, “The other part is automobile regime which they wanted to introduce sometimes in January, and immediately that announcement was made over eight vessels were diverted to Cotonou, Ghana and Togo.
“Used vehicles that do come into Nigeria in trickles are not coming as before because the importers don’t know what will happen to their consignments.
“If you are saying okay pay 20 per cent custom duty, 35 per cent levy, it doesn’t really make sense. Are you going to place the duty on the cost price or on the year of manufacture? If it is years of manufacture then of course, the duty will now be realistic because this is a second hand vehicle and the total cost of that vehicle is not even up to N100,000.
“So, importers said fine, if am going to pay so much money, why don’t I go to Cotonou and of course those same cars will find their ways into this country,” he said.
He advised the advised the Federal Government to be consistent in its policy for the growth of the economy.
It could be recalled that the Nigeria Customs Service has witnessed a sharp drop in its first quarter revenue of 2014.
The customs generated N77.9 billion as against N400 billion it was expected to collect during the period.