Worried by the incessant alerts and Demand Notices leading to delays in cargo clearing at the nation’s seaports, a frontline freight forwarder, Dr. Fred Ajuzie has advocated for the repositioning of the Post Clearance Audit, PCA of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS to facilitate trade, eliminate delays and grow the economy.
Speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos yesterday, Ajuzie observed that there was a lot of congestion and delays at the seaports as a result of the relegation of the PCA whose job it was to go after any consignment and recover whatever shortfall in duty payment after the consignment must have exited the port to the owner’s warehouse or shop which was no longer the case today.
He further argued that the insistence of the customs officials to collect every penny on cargoes at the ports before the cargo exits, forces importers and their agents to abandon their cargoes at the ports in search of money to clear them, which incidentally causes delays and ultimately, congestion.
He recalled that in the time past, the releasing officer would just release a consignment to the importer and refer same to the PCA whose duty was to carry on post clearance audit of the consignment with a view to recover any difference in duty payment for follow up, thus easing and facilitating trade for the economic growth and prosperity of the nation.
According to him, “PCA works like whatever any customs officer input, such job must be released and be referred to PCA. PCA is the one to get any revenue that the customs did not get from any consignment. PCA get another aspect of the work that they do, their job is investigative in nature. PCA can go to your warehouse, PCA can go to your shop. That is the work of PCA.
“But do they do all those things now? When Dikko became Comptroller General, he said any consignment that you see in the port, collect the revenue in the port before it exits. That was when PCA work started dying and until they revive it back to life, because that time, even any work you have, whether solar panel, machinery, as long as that job has paid duty, examination conducted, that was the reason people were not afraid of examination then, any work you have paid two Naira, release such job to leave the port. That was when trade facilitation was working. I witnessed it.
“If you release it, you refer. The releasing officer that is releasing such a container will refer it in the system to the PCA. So, whatever revenue that is lost from that job will be recovered by the PCA. The problem with the system started when PCA was relegated to the background. Although I heard that PCA has been revived by giving it another status but would they reposition it to be what it should be? That is when you start having trade facilitation.
“I am suggesting that whatever you are carrying, once examination is conducted, as long as an officer is releasing and you find out that work did not pay the right duty that it was supposed to pay, refer that job to PCA in the system so that this will minimize the cases of alerts and queries. You refer the job to PCA and they will invite the importer. As long as there’s an address to the importer, you write to PCA, PCA will ask the importer to come. PCA has a lot of work to do.”
Ajuzie who is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PatFuze Investment Limited believed that if the PCA is repositioned and adequately equipped with the needed capacity, there would be no limit to what the customs Service in Nigeria would achieve.
He called on the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi to give attention to the PCA and bring it back to its former days of shoring up revenue for the federation and eliminating the incidences of congestion occasioned by delays caused by alerts and Demand Notices, arguing that he needed to do more in this regards as expectations were so high on him.
“Adeniyi is supposed to do better than he is doing now in this aspect because for me, when he was appointed, I was happy because he is someone groomed to improve the customs because he worked with the past CGs. He is supposed to do more because administratively, he has been in the customs at that level. He has not really impressed me the way I had expected him to do. He ought to do better than he is doing today to reposition the PCA for maximum result “, he said.
Photo: Dr. Fred Ajuzie, Managing Director, PatFuze Investment Limited.
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