The Director, African Center for Supply Chain, Dr. Obiora Madu has accused importers of used vehicles and freight forwarders for the difficult to have uniform duty on imported vehicles of the same year and model.
Madu who said this in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, also said that the freight forwarders are only concerned with negotiating with customs officers instead on insisting on proper documentation.
Justifying his position, he said: “In all honesty, I think importers are the people pushing customs not to have uniform duties on imported vehicles. I know of an importer whenever he comes they say he has come because his documentations are perfect and he is not ready to part with any dime. No matter who you are, he is ready to go to any extent that you want to go”.
“So our freight forwarders, some of them don’t care about documentation and the rest of them what they care is negotiation , how much will it cost to get this thing out of the ports, instead of doing the right thing, this is my documentation, fault it”, he argued.
He however said that there is a high percentage of people falsifying documents and using fake certificates, even as he urged the importers to improve on their integrity rating.
“So it is the importers’ attitude that has made the Customs to say ‘in God we trust, everybody we will investigate ’, when you have a large percentage of the people falsifying documents using fake certificates, documents and the rest of them; if you are on customs side you will sit tight. Importers need to improve on their integrity rating”, he insisted.
Madu, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Multimix Academy, also said that another reason that may make it difficult for a uniformed duty to be placed on these vehicles is because some of the importers buy from different parts of them world at different prices, adding that the customs now rely on the importers’ documentation to know the duty.
He charged that all hands must be on deck to ensure there is trade facilitation at the ports.
“If you are talking about trade facilitation, it is on both sides, if the importers are not compliant then customs cannot facilitate trade, so it is a two-way thing. They (importers) need to help customs by being compliant, all the companies that are on blue and green lanes are they complaining? No, they are rated high integrity wise as far as customs is concerned, so customs does not delay their containers when they come. But if you are in red, everything must come down from that container for examination”, he said.
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