Oluyinka Onigbinde
The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has urged freight forwarders to support any presidential candidate that will be explicit on how to assist the freight forwarding profession through implementation of people’s welfare.
In his Eid-El-Fitri and Workers’ Day message to freight forwarders on Monday the Acting National President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto said that the inconsistency in government policies by the Muhammadu Buhari administration was an eye opener for members of the association.
According to him, “We won’t allow anyone to fool us like this outgoing government is doing. We are gradually losing our profession to foreign domination, courtesy of lack of law that will protect indigenous practitioners. We must, however, come together to achieve greatness. An injury to one should be injury to all.”
Farinto further said that it was obvious that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) would be implementing the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) Valuation policy this month going by the news filtering in the industry.
He added that this development needed to be monitored and that people that would not want the process to be successful may introduce things outside the agreement into the procedures.
He stated that: “I have released the agreed procedures on clearance of Standard Chassis Vehicles that fall within VIN Valuation and Non Standard Chassis Vehicles, salvage and accidented vehicles few days ago. We need to allow this new changes, going by all we go through in the hands of customs various units to clear vehicles in the ports and even when you take your valuation, many alerts are put on our declarations and it takes the grace of God and difficult conditions to get them out of the ports.
“As if to say that is not enough, you need to know the number of calls we receive from our members delivering these vehicles within and outside Lagos environment. Many customs units will say your values are compromised, it must be jacked up and many of us are at their mercies pleading that DN should not be issued on already exited vehicles.
“This and many more are what we believe the VIN valuation will eliminate. Many agents have been given forged and mutilated valuation papers by third parties and are left to suffer the consequences of whatever happens. We do not need all this to get our vehicles release and we promise to challenge any command that may want to use the office of monitoring to extort money from our members when this new process commences”, he assured.
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He further promised that the 15% National Automotive Council (NAC) levy turned import levy would be pursued vigorously immediately after the Sallah break, assuring that the leadership of ANLCA would engage the National Assembly on the insensitivity of the present government to the plight of the masses to have introduced levy at this period when the economy is in comatose.
“We will also ensure that the Federal Ministry of Finance is dragged before the peoples’ representatives on this matter”.
According to him, “since the CRFFN Governing Council may also be inaugurated this week, it will be our first issue to be raised at the plenary which needs urgent attention. All our efforts to eliminate NAC-turned-levy is being done in collaboration with the Motor Dealers Association.”
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