A dealer in imported vehicles; Mr. Ifeanyi Emoh, has given reasons import duty paid for cars that were involved accident are almost the same with the ones paid for cars that were not involved in accidents
In a chat with Shipping Position Daily, he said that there is no issue bringing in damaged vehicles since getting a new one will make it more expensive to get a car, even as he emphasized on the need for government to beef up security in our borders.
“Bringing in damaged vehicles is not a problem, it is business. Nigerians go to the US to buy damaged vehicles at a very cheap rate so that by the time they bring it in here with the little consideration from the government in terms of duty, then they fix it and they sell. If you bring in a brand new vehicle here you cannot sell it because the cost of purchase and clearing will make the price high. So the business community has no other choice than to go for the damaged cars. The government should also work on our borders; all our borders are so porous. There are lots of openings and how many personnel do they have to man all these posts”, he explained.
He also said that customs have their own specification when it comes to accident cars even as he maintained that before a vehicle is classified as accident car, you have to come with the original salvage from the shippers zone.
Speaking further, he said, “to an extent the cost of clearing a damaged car and new car is almost the same thing because the customs have their specifications. There is an extent to what they can accept as a damaged car and there is also the extent of damage they will see as just a dent. That a car was batched does not make it accidented vehicle. In customs standard, if you talking about accidented vehicles you have to come with the original salvage from the shippers’ zone, then both the airbags, chassis will be damaged. Most of the vehicles comply with this some other ones are just dents. Because of the high duty rate, that is why everybody wants to go under the platform of accident cars in other to have some discount. But really most of them are accidented, because when you come out you have to go for some repairs. And this kind of repairs we do here are cheaper here more than the ones we have there”.
He also applauded the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) in the fight against smuggling, saying that the closure of land importation of vehicles has helped immensely in the fight against smuggling.
“To a reasonable extent, the customs are winning the fight against car smuggling, but they should ensure there is uniformity of duty payable on vehicles in the ports, if they do that the volume of smuggling will drop.
“What is the essence of vehicles coming in here and then the duty is so exorbitant. We encourage the government, there is a minimum duty level you will put in place, importers and freight forwarders will be encouraged to pay it. Then government will generate revenue and trade will move”
“But if you put a duty that is difficult to pay, at the end of the day the same officers that are supposed to generate revenue will compromise, thereby making the whole system not to look serious”
As it stands now importers do not have confidence in freight forwarders any longer because if you assemble freight forwarders they will give you different values for the same vehicle. Some will end up delivering the vehicles to the owners while will have issues with Customs in the cause of delivering the vehicle”, he explained.
He also alleged that the e-auctioning introduced by the customs has been hijacked by some individuals.
“People are hijacking the biding process indirectly. For example, one person will bid for a particular car that is not worth N200, 000 for N300,000 and the next minute the same person will bid for the N1,000, 000 for the same vehicle and you know customs said that after some days if the highest bidder did not show up, the goods go to the next person and in this process it will still go to the same person”
“They scare people away from the system; there is no transparency in the whole thing. If you use the American online auction for example, when you are bidding, you will see others who are still bidding for the same product at the end of the day, you will see the highest bidder instantly. But here you only bid and you will not know what others have bided”, he noted.
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