The Chairman, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), PTML Chapter, Chief Goodluck Onunji has blamed the bottlenecks bedeviling the Pre- Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) on the importers who cut corners in order to short change the government.
Chief Onunji who was speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos also blamed the challenges on the activities of the service providers who he said provides the network with which the customs server works.
He stated that those that were complaining against PAAR were those who failed to comply with the provisions of PAAR by not declaring genuinely but rather chose to fill anything they liked thinking that they would be smart enough to beat the system.
“You cannot as an importer bring an invoice and fill any HS code that you like and feel that it will go. Once there is a mistake, the PAAR will dictate it and correct it and you will see that this is the correct thing”.
“Many of the importers don’t want to do things well, if they do things well, they will know that the easiest way to do things well is through PAAR. At times, people do think that customs are not doing their work, they are doing their work. Those that are in the system know their job”.
“The hiccups we do have in PAAR is from the importers and their advisers. We, the freight forwarders advised them, before you prepare your form M or otherwise, contact a freight forwarder who will adviser you so that you will not make any mistake”, he said.
The NAGAFF Chairman disclosed that members of the association at the PTML chapter do advise those importers that import their goods through the terminal on how to prepare their documents which has eliminated complains in the terminal.
He faulted the impression where importers think that once they have paid their duty, they would not be asked to pay any additional money saying that the assumption was wrong especially where the cost, insurance and freight (CIF) value may have been undervalued, in that case the importer is referred to the valuation unit for reconciliation.
He therefore advised the importers to take their time to study the tariff as well as the invoice before putting up the goods they want to process adding that if they get them correct, within 24 hours, their PAARs would be ready and this would eliminate further payments.
Speaking on the areas of the Service Providers, Chief Onunji noted that although one may understand the network problem being experienced in the country sometimes, he contended that the service providers should improve on their network so as not to make the people believe that they were deliberately sabotaging the efforts of the Nigerian Customs Service in ensuring prompt delivery of service to Nigerians.
“We the stakeholders in the Maritime industry are begging the service providers and other inspection agents to support PAAR, let us try it, at least when Nigeria started its democracy, we starter testing it but now, everybody like democracy. PAAR has come and we pray that it will stay because it is the only way we Nigerians can get it right”, he stated.
On the 1 percent Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS) formerly collected by the ousted service providers and is now being collected by the Nigerian customs service since the take over of the Destination Inspection scheme, Chief Onunji has this to say,” stopping the collection of the 1 percent CISS is not what you can just wake up and say, stop it, because the money is entering into the government purse and for the purpose it is being made”.
O, stopping it will not help issues. Those that will say it are those that are still fighting the PAAR that it should not stay. Let it stay because it is still serving its purpose. I cannot support anybody that is saying that the 1 percent CISS should go”.
