About 48 hours after the Minister of AgricultureRural Development; Dr Akinwumi Adesina, disclosed that some major importers of rice were owing the Federal Government a whopping N36.5Billion, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) yesterday insisted that rice importers who exceeded their allocated quota must pay the equivalent duties on excess imports following the expiration of the two weeks’ notice given to them.
The Public Relations Officer of the NCS, Mr Wale Adeniyi, said this in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
About 48 hours after the Minister of AgricultureRural Development; Dr Akinwumi Adesina, disclosed that some major importers of rice were owing the Federal Government a whopping N36.5Billion, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) yesterday insisted that rice importers who exceeded their allocated quota must pay the equivalent duties on excess imports following the expiration of the two weeks’ notice given to them.
The Public Relations Officer of the NCS, Mr Wale Adeniyi, said this in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
The minister had given the importer up to this week to pay or face sanctions, but the Customs spokesperson confirmed yesterday that the notice given to the importers to reconcile their imports expired on Wednesday.
The minister had told the media that, "Without waiting for the determination of supply gap by the inter-ministerial committees or issuance of quotas, two Asian companies–Popular Farms and Mills, owned by Stallion Group; and Olam, had imported 390,145.53MT and 244,126.63MT respectively, of polished rice as at December 3, 2014, at the preferential duty of 10 per cent and levy 20 per cent".
According to the minister, Popular Farm and Mills imported 390,143MT, instead of the 89,939 approved quota and hence, liable to pay N2.2 billion as tariff on approved quota, and N17.2 billion as tariff on excess import, bringing its total indebtedness to Nigeria to N19.37 billion.
He said that on the other hand, Olam imported 244,126MT as against the 133,963 approved for it, thereby owing Nigeria N9.03 million as duty payable on both approved quota and excess import.
Adesina said that three other importers would also have to pay about N8 billion to the Federal Government on the same issues, bringing the total to N36.56 billion.
The minister said, "The national supply gap of import grade rice is expected to decline to one million MT in 2015, 0.3MT in 2016 and to zero in 2017 when the country is expected to become self-reliant in rice production."
According to the minister, it has been discovered that some of the rice importers are bagging rice produced in Nigeria, passing them as foreign, because the nation has succeeded in bridging the quality gap with good quality seedlings and adequate processing plants.
But, Adeniyi said the service had on Wednesday officially wrote the specific companies, “notifying them about the fact that they had defaulted and the need for them to pay the duties.''
The Customs spokesman said that four of such importers had been contacted and had only a couple of days to acknowledge and responded.
Adeniyi, who also said the Service would not give the importers any other long notice,’’ added:
“The figure that was imported in excess and the amount they owed were also communicated to them.
“Our letters were specific to individual importers who had exceeded the allocated quota and the specific amount had also been indicated.’’
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