The Tin-Can Island Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has disclosed that it is not the duty of the officers of the service to calculate duties for imported vehicles, adding that the statutory function of the valuation unit of the service is to issue ex-factory price.
The Public Relations Officer of the Command, Mr. Uche Ejesieme, a Superintendent of Customs, said this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily at the Tin-Can Island port, Apapa, Lagos.
The clarification is coming few weeks after practitioners in the sector accused the valuation unit of incompetence in the calculations of duty on imported vehicles.
Explaining further, Ejesieme said that the valuation unit only issues ex-factory price before the importer proceeds to cyber café for the necessary calculations.
“Any agent or importer that really understands how the system works will agree with us that the valuation unit as it were has nothing actually to do with calculation of duty. What they only do as part of their statutory functions is to issue you what they call ex-factory price. And once they issue you that, you will now go to your Cyber Café and do the necessary calculations. So it is actually not the responsibilities of the valuation unit to calculate duty, what they only do is to is to issue ex-factory price you now go to your cyber café do your calculations and make your declaration to pay your duty”, he stressed.
The command image maker however said that most freight forwarders and clearing agents are having issues with the technicalities of the job.
Uche, maintained that customs operations in the ports are limited into two which are examination and release of cargoes.
“So, it is important to disabuse the minds of some of them who may not understand how the system works, because most of the people are having issues of understanding the technicalities of the job to the extent that whatever happens they will attribute it to customs. And don’t forget that customs operations in the ports are just limited to two things- examination and release of cargoes”
“Because in the value chain, if anything happens in the value chain people tend to believe that it is the fault of customs and certainly it is not customs. Let them know that once you collect the ex-factory price for customs purposes, you go to the cyber café and capture the declaration”, he concluded.
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