Unhappy with the large number of overtime vehicles, a transportation expert, Mr Paul Ndibe has called on the Nigeria Customs Service to reduce waiver on overtime vehicles in other to encourage the owners to come for them.
Mr. Ndibe made this call recently in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
He said that giving waiver to the consignees of the vehicles will enable them come and clear their cargos which is a way of decongesting the ports.
“I know that everything including vehicles imported is goods imported, therefore it is cargo. For the period they are there in the terminal they have incurred demurrage, so just like in various situations removing the vehicles could be a step towards ports’ decongestion. There is no cargo in the port without a consignee. Therefore, my advice is that the consignee should be asked to come and remove the cargo”
He also faulted the idea of auctioning cargoes, saying that it will not give room for government to recover the actual revenue.
“If it is because of the demurrage that is on the cargo, it can be waived or removed and let the person pays a minimum duty on it and then carry his cargo instead of auctioning it or seeking customs mandate to auction the goods. So my take is that at one point or the other people imported and it is an investment for people and they are all Nigerians. So one way to help is if you cargo has incurred some amount of demurrage on it, you the consignee should come and pay small amount on it and take your cargo away. That is the only way we can decongest the ports. In doing this we will be able to achieve two things- recovering of revenue and decongesting the ports. Going the other way if you go into the process of auctioning which will attract other costs, goods may not end in the hands of the consignee which is disastrous. It might not bring the revenue it would have attracted if the consignee was asked to come and take his cargo. So in auction people do not see value in it, so you can give a discount and time limit. The goods will definitely come to you and you get your revenue. At the end of the day, it is Nigerians so that you do not instill cruelty on people for any reason”, he concluded.
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