Following series of allegations and complaints from importers of vehicles and their agents that the Tin Can Island Customs Command was collecting higher duties on vehicles than PTML Command which is also a vehicle importing command, the Tin Can Customs Command has said that both commands maintain a uniform tariff.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, spokesperson of the command; Uche Ejesieme also said that the command is now poised to generate more revenue on imported vehicles. He said that the command now collects duty on items loaded inside any vehicle that is imported through the command.
He noted that over the years, the command has been losing huge revenue due to the fact that it does not collect duty on such items.
Speaking on the duty charged on vehicles at the terminal, he said: “There is this strong perception that our tariffs and duty payments on vehicles are higher than that of PTML, but it might interest you to note that there was a day we actually put this issue to empirical test, the CAC directed that we should print transactions of six months from PTML and from Tin Can, we saw that they are the same thing, the people that brought the allegations were also astonished to have discovered this. What we did was to print from the system in order to draw the analyses”
With regards to busses carrying goods, Ejesieme assured that the Nigeria Customs Integrated System (NICIS 2)is capable of making her generate revenue for any buses carrying goods.
“What we do now is that if there is any vehicle carrying any load, we collect duty on the load, over the years there has been a serious gap on these kinds of transactions, you can imagine the aggregate volume of the loads in all the buses”
“At Tin Can Island Port now, the paradigm has shifted; any bus carrying loads now must pay for them, provided they are dutiable items, by so doing we have got a lot of revenue that could have slipped out of the hands of government”, he said.
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