The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the TinCan Island Port (TICP) command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS); Mr Uche Ejesieme, a Superintendent of Customs has said that vehicles importation account for a very large percentage of the revenue collected at the command.
Ejesieme made this disclosure in a chat with Shipping Position Daily at the command last week.
He also reiterated that the command is poised to sustain the huge collection, adding that it is one of the reasons the command has engaged in the sensitization the major stakeholders on the guidelines of vehicle clearance.
The TICP customs image maker also fingered compliance as one of the major issues which the command had last year in the area of vehicle clearance at the ports, even as he added that the command is working seriously to ensure trade facilitation this year.
He said: “For us here, vehicle accounts for a very large percentage of the revenue that comes into Nigeria Customs Service and we are making sure that whatever we can do to sustain that is being done. Tin Can is originally a vehicle ports and what we are doing is to ensure that we facilitate legitimate trade. Here at Tin Can Island we try to sensitize and educate our stakeholders on what they need to know and do particularly on the issue of compliance. One major challenge last year was the issue of compliance, but through sensitization and education we have been able to make most of our stakeholders to be on the same trade with us”.
Ejesieme however said that in the trade chain, customs perform less, adding that the bulk of the work lies with shipping companies.
He called on stakeholders to be more complaint this year than they were previous years in other to reap the full benefit of trade facilitation.
“Part of that is to ensure facilitation of legitimate trade meaning that if you are a complaint declarant you can be sure that there will be seamless exit of your cargo; that is if there are no other variables. If you come to trade chain, customs performs few percent ; there are other people in the value chain like the shipping company, if for example we exit and there is a kind of server brake down in the shipping company sometimes people erroneously attribute it to customs. For us it’s just capturing and paying your duty, but there are other agencies who are working with customs. But for us here trade facilitation is what we have vowed to do in line with the presidential directive that is contained in the executive order of Mr. President. We are using this opportunity to call on our stakeholders to try and be as compliant as possible so as to ripe the full benefit of this trade facilitation”, he added.
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