Following the recent call by the new Customs Area Controller of the Apapa Customs Command, Comptroller Abubakar Bashir on the owners of unutilized Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) and unpaid assessment to come forward and do the needful or risk blocking of their licenses, arrest and closure of company, stakeholders operating in the command have described the call as a welcomed development.
Speaking to newsmen in Lagos on the directive, former Chairman of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Apapa Chapter, Dr. Fred Ajuzie stated that whoever had gone to generate assessment without making payment is criminal adding that what the person had done was to abandon an already generated assessment to obtain another PAAR in order to make payment with the fresh assessment.
According to him,” Maybe the one you generated before was high and at the same time you abandon it and generate another one and make payment and take the goods. The person is a criminal, that means you are playing with the system and nobody is a fool, customs cannot fold their hands and criminals are ripping our economy and they will not go there and arrest them”.
He posited that for the Controller to come up with the issue of unutilized PAAR and unpaid assessment at this time of his sojourn in Apapa, it means that the Customs headquarters may have drawn his attention to it even as he stated that” in his own capacity as the Controller, the stakeholders’ meeting was a very good avenue for him to relay the information”.
He however disclosed that in the event that one raised a PAAR and later discovered an error in the said PAAR, that such a person is allowed to apply for cancellation of the already generated PAAR following a laid down procedures for cancellation rather than abandoning it and opening another one.
“First of all, if you raise a PAAR and you couldn’t pay or you are asking for a cancellation of the assessment, it is obtainable, you state your reason for seeking a cancellation and you follow it up, the ones that can be cancelled by the TS or whoever, they can do that. But if you abandon it, it is criminal because there are some assessments that were made in error. You cannot generate assessment in error and you abandon it and go ahead to get another PAAR to generate another assessment and take up the goods.
“So, first of all, customs will investigate those assessment generated to determine whether the goods are still in the port or the goods have been taken away. That is the first investigation they should do but if the goods are still there, you cannot say that the owners of the unpaid assessment have defaulted since the goods are still there. But if the goods are no longer there, that is a problem”, he said.
On his part, the Chairman, National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Apapa chapter, Mr. Emeka Enwelu observed that the Controller was right in issuing the directive advising those who have unutilized PAAR and unpaid assessment to go and utilize them as they had been so far generated and captured by the customs system.
He said,” Many times, people prepare their document and submit to customs, customs doesn’t know what you have; it is you that submitted your final document. At a time, we come to realize that most of them have something incriminating in their consignment and looking at the problem it can create for them at the command, some of them will not want to come up openly to take that cargo and will be looking for any opportunity for them to pick their cargo instead of utilizing that PAAR. Any consignee who is genuine who has declared what he has before submission would be happy to utilize his PAAR.
“And most times, most of these consignees are not aware that their PAAR has not been utilized, the agent knows why he generated the PAAR, the agent as well knows why he didn’t use that PAAR. So, if the CAC is insisting that unutilized PAAR, he mentioned about a thousand of them registered and not been utilized, for God’s sake, he is looking for revenue and he has to start earlier to announce to whoever is involved to utilize his PAAR.
“An assessment that is unpaid for has been captured already, it has a C-number that they have generated from the system and that C-number is serially printed. So, the assessment that is unutilized and they have generated C-number for it, there is no way you can reverse the C-number, that C-number must take care of the assessment that has been generated for it”.
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