The calls by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to adopt the 1% Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS) previously collected by the outgone Service Providers and which is currently being collected by NCS has received a boost recently.
This was as the Founder, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Boniface Aniebonam has called for more government funding to the service to enable it meet up with its challenges.
In a statement issued on Wednesday and signed by the Senior Special Assistant and Deputy National President (Seaport), Prince Obums Anene, Aniebonam contended that the Nigeria Customs Service cannot be an agent to itself therefore the need for the association to support the service in its quest for more funding.
According to the statement,” as regards the alleged claims by the Nigeria Customs Service to adopt 1% CISS to earned commission to enable their expenses in view of the additional responsibility, it is the view of the Founder that Nigeria Customs Service indeed needed additional money to meet their operational cost, staff welfare, salaries and other requirements. However, it is most unfortunate that 1% CISS represented commission paid to private service providers in the past”.
“The Founder advocates that Nigeria Customs Service cannot be an agent to itself and therefore the going forward is to request from the government an additional incentive to meet up with their challenges. It is therefore reasonable that Nigeria Customs Service rather than taking 7% of duty collected should ask for5%-7% of the FOB value of imports into Nigeria. Nigeria Customs Service should count on our support in this regard”.
The statement further chided other freight forwarding associations who were calling for the 1% CISS be paid to the agents as commission owing to the fact that they facilitate the collection of Customs duty from the importers saying that that should not be the situation.
It further contended that since it was a common knowledge that licensed customs agents were neither agents of customs nor the federal government but agents of the importers, the issue of service charge or professional charges as the case may be are what the agents as well as freight forwarders should be clamouring for.
“The issue of Commission is a matter to be handled by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) as a regulatory body. It is most unfortunate that CRFFN is yet to stabilize its administration to tackle its amendment. The Council as the power to make regulation to include commission to be paid to registered freight forwarders for every transaction performed in the port operation and customs formalities”, the statement said.
On the arrest of containers cleared out of customs control being delivered to the owners’ warehouse by the Enforcement Unit of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), it regretted that since SON and other government agencies had been asked to operate from outside the ports, the importers deemed it that the rules of engagement had been abrogated.
It however cautioned that the wrong notion must be done away with while adding that it was the duty of the licensed customs agents and the freight forwarders to educate and inform importers on the need to ensure strict compliance to regulations.
While disclosing that the legal department of NAGAFF was making effort to ascertain the authority of SON to arrest containers on the highways other than visiting the owners’ warehouse in search of offending goods or non conformity imports, it however advised SON to consider convening a stakeholders meeting where all the operational hiccups and the worries of practitioners would be addressed to avoid further damage to international trade borne out of additional cost inherent in demurrage on detained trucks.
