The Managing Director, Ossy Gold Agencies Limited, Mr. Osita Machie has called on the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to enshrine the Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF) value in the import tariff of the Nigeria Customs Service.
Machie who was speaking to Primetime Reporters on the challenges faced by the importers and their agents in a bid to clear their consignments at the ports stated that that was the only way that the seeming corruption permeating through the fabrics of the Nigeria Customs Service could be stopped.
He lamented that a situation where people were charged different CIF values on the same consignment under the same classification and value because one was more connected than the other did not augur well for business in the country.
He however blamed the customs for not doing enough to educate the importer on the best way to make genuine and correct declaration of their imports arguing that the Service had no basis whatsoever to query the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) which it issued on the mere excuse of under-declaration on the part of the importer.
“The way they go about it, they issue PAAR, they query the same PAAR they issued. If you see the stress of issuing PAAR, querying it and saying that they were querying it based on under-declaration. Where were they? They are supposed to be the custodian of HS Code, they should be able to know he content of each Full Container Load (FCL)”.
“The only thing that will stop corruption in the Customs is let the Federal Ministry of Finance enshrine Cost, Insurance and Freight in the tariff. It is not just saying that this item attracts ten percent, if I have long leg, I will give 1 Million Naira, if I don’t, they will maximize five Million Naira on the same item”.
“Are we not going to sell in the same market? They should include CIF so that whoever wants to import will know how much it will cost him”, he said.
He pointed out that Demand Notice (DN) had became the order of the day insisting that if nothing urgent was done, Nigerians would soon stop importing their goods through the nation’s ports thereby growing the economy of the neighbouring countries who lie in wait to benefit from the loopholes in the nation’s lopsided policies.
He further bemoaned the activities of the terminal operators whom he said kept charging Nigerians without recourse to the international best practices wondering the different between the time of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and now.
According to him,” they are causing the traffic on the highway. Before now, we were parking the trailers inside the terminals at Apapa, Tincan, Ijora, everywhere. We used to have a provision inside these same terminals. Before now, it doesn’t cost more than #15,000 to carry a 20 ft container because as soon as you are returning the empty container, you position for another contract. But in this case, two weeks or more, the time you will use to do more than ten jobs, thereby causing congestions, blocking the highways”.
He regretted that on taking over of the terminals by the concessionaires, they pulled down some major structures of about 2 hectares each to create more space in the terminals which they ended up not using for anything.
He added that the problems were further worsened by the activities of the government regulatory agencies who he accused of not caring about them as according to him, what they come to do at the port was mere hallucination and window dressing.
“Everything we report to them, they will tell you that they will stop them but immediately they get back to Abuja, the next day, the thing will double. So, we have a serious problem, we are drifting, the Nigerian economy is drifting”, Machie stated.
