…Says it moved 55, 000 containers from Apapa in 2014
The Nigeria Customs Service has faulted the claims that it focused more on revenue collection and meeting targets set at the detriment of trade facilitation describing it as misleading.
Barr. Osuala Nwagbara had in the course of his paper presentation tagged,” Towards A New Port Order; The Journey So Far: A Lawyer’s Perspective”, which he presented at the 1st Shippers’ Day Celebration in Lagos noted that while the Customs Service World over were not only revenue generating agents of government but were also international trade facilitators at the ports, noted that the case seemed different with the Nigerian Customs Service who he said dwelt more on revenue collection than trade facilitation.
But in a swift reaction, the Customs Area Controller (CAC) Apapa Area Command, Comptroller Charles Edike stated that the service was interested in collecting revenue as well as facilitating trade adding that the service in facilitating trade would not let the revenue that was due to the government go.
“We as much as possible encourage trade; we as much as possible will not allow anybody to be delayd when he is clean and straight forward. When you are compliant, any officer that delays people for a minute, that officer will be queried, that officer will be dealt with”.
“Last year in Apapa, 4 Assistant Controllers were sent out of the Command because they delayed , because they kept people”, he said.
Edike observed that although Apapa command had a target to meet every month but in terms of trade facilitation, the command did not use meeting of its target as an excuse to delay and keep people back adding that the command made effort to move containers to less busy terminals.
According to him,” in Apapa, there are so much that we can do in a day and the remaining ones, must we keep them because of our target? We move them out to less busy commands. Now for example, last year, we moved 5, 300 containers to Kano, over 1, 000 to Kaduna, 652 to Oyo, Over 2, 000 to Ogun, over 6, 000 to MMC , Lillypond over 18, 000, over 8, 000 to KLT, over 8, 000 to Lagos Free Zone 26, 000, Mid maritime 703, Tincan over 4, 800. Last year, we moved over 55, 000 containers out of Apapa ports because of trade facilitation”.
“This is outside some things like wet commodities, pallets, bundles etc. Now, if we are moving 55, 000 containers out of Apapa to other less busy terminals, I think that is trade facilitation because I would have sit back and say no, I have target to meet and therefore these containers will not go until they pay all the duties to Apapa”.
The customs boss reiterated that in a case where a trader was carrying the wrong HS code paying 5 percent duty for a consignment he ought to have paid 20 percent duty to the government, one would not expect that the customs would allow him to go in the name of trade facilitation rather the service would hold the trader until he paid the balance of 15 percent to make up the difference.
He said,” we will not sacrifice government revenue at the altar of facilitating trade, we want to balance the two and therefore once you pay your duty correctly, we allow you to go but when you don’t pay fully, we will get you to pay the balance”.
