Following weeks of argument over who pays the one percent commission as proposed by the Licensed Customs Agents, the President, Shippers’ Association of Lagos State (SAL), Rev. Jonathan Nicol has said that the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) provided that one percent of every duty collected by the freight agents be paid to them.
It will be recalled that in his inaugural speech after his re-election as the National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu has promised his members that he would pursue and get the federal government to pay the Licensed customs agents one percent of the duty that they helped the government to collect annually.
However, the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), in a press release it issued recently kicked against the proposal arguing that the licensed customs agents were neither the agents of the the customs nor that of the federal government of Nigeria.
According to NAGAFF in the release titled,” In the matter of 1% CISS and the arrest of Containers within the City highways by Standards Organization of Nigeria”, the service charge or the professional charges were to be paid by the importers and exporters to the licensed customs agents or freight agents as according to the association, the licensed customs agents were rather importers agents.
NAGAFF further contended that the issue of commission for agents was a matter to be handled by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) as a regulatory body adding that the Council had the power to make regulations to include commission to be paid to the registered freight forwarders for every transaction performed in port operation and customs formalities.
Speaking in an interview with Primetime reporters in Lagos, Rev. Nicol stated that there was no need for the bickering as currently obtained between the two associations as to who pays who adding that the issue under contention had been taken care of by the law.
He noted that if the government was responsible, it should on its own know that each duty an importer paid, one percent of it should be set aside for the freight forwarders.
According to him,” we understand that there is a provision for freight forwarders to take one percent of whatever duty that they collect and you have the associations in place”.
“If the government was prudent enough to understand the CEMA properly, each duty we pay, they ought to remove one percent for the freight forwarders for peace to reign in the industry except otherwise they say no, they now amend the CEMA and then you coin them and give them different names”.
The SAL boss therefore advised the freight forwarders to brace up and ask for what the law had given them as it was enough incentive for them to carry out their jobs effectively.
“So, CEMA made provisions for some kind of incentives for the two of them. The importers pay for the services of the freight forwarders through what you call the agency fee. Once they pay that, they have no business with the freight forwarders anymore. I don’t see why they should now ask the importers to pay more”, Nicol said.
