The National President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Chief Increase Uche has attributed the cause of third party declaration inherent in import trade in Nigeria to wrong interpretation and application of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy restricting Foreign Exchange on forty (43) items.
Uche who made this known in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos recently explained that the CBN policy only restricted importers from accessing FOREX through the official Foreign Exchange window arguing that the importer still has the chances of opening Form M so long he could always indicate that the transaction was not valid for FOREX as indicated at the upper left hand side of the Form M.
He opined that once an importer indicated that the transaction was not valid for FOREX and made the appropriate application that he needed to source for FOREX elsewhere, the onus was on CBN to investigate to ensure that there was no fraudulent transaction in it.
According to him,” But right now, those authorized dealer banks will always avoid opening Form M for you once the cargo falls within those forty three items which is wrong because the requirement for anyone going into international business to bring in any cargo into this country is that you must open a Form M whether payment is required or not.
But where the policy did not restrict anybody from opening Form M and then banks will refuse that you will not open Form M, customs again will deny you PAAR, that is the cause of the so called third party because there are ignoramus in the system that wants to cut corner, that wants to clear their cargo on time without going back to the CBN to formalize the process since you know that you are not obtaining your Form M through the official exchange window.
“So, it is an anomaly that all of us should sit down to correct and we have made this proposal before the authorities that what is actually hindering the implementation of NICIS II that brought about customs using various task forces is that the so called restriction on forty three items is misapplied, that we should go back and find out where the problems are.
“Let the policy implementation be reviewed so that the issue of third party will no longer be. We know the fault; it is not sending the Strike Force into the port that will solve the problem. To resolve the problem means that the policy framework need to be reviewed and let the importing public understand what they are required to do and let the operators know their role too because it is a monetary policy but fiscal policy is being applied”.
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